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/THE WORKS OF 
HENRY VAN DYKE 
AVALON EDITION 
VOLUME XV 

MESSAGES AND PERSUASIONS 







* 


r 







y 


COUNSELS 
BY THE WAY 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1921 

<1 



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Copyright, 1921 , by Charles Scribner’s Sons 


Copyright, 1897 , 1900 , 1903 , 1908 , by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 





SI '21 

©B.A653583 


/ 

J 




THE FOOT-PATH TO PEACE 


To be glad of life , because it gives you the chance to love and 
to work and to play and to look up at the stars ; to be 
contented with your possessions , but not satisfied with 
yourself until you have made the best of them ; to despise 
nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness , 
and to fear nothing except cowardice; to be governed 
by your admirations rather than by your disgusts; 
to covet nothing that is your neighbour's except his kind- 
ness of heart and gentleness of manners ; to think sel- 
dom of your enemies , often of your friends , and every 
day of Christ; and to spend as much time as you can , 
with body and with spirit , in God's out-of-doors — these 
are little guide-posts on the foot-path to peace . 



CONTENTS 


I. 

Ships and Havens — 



1. Pilgrims of the Sea 

1 


2. Whither Bound? 

7 


3. The Haven of Work 

12 


4. The Haven of Character 

31 


5. The Last Port 

38 

II. 

The Worth of a Man 

44 

III. 

Faith 

65 

IV. 

Courage 

84 

V. 

Power 

99 

VI. 

Salt 

120 

VII. 

The Open Door 

138 

VIII. 

Resurrection Now 

156 

IX. 

Joy and Power 

171 

X. 

Abraham’s Adventure 

196 

XI. 

Solomon’s Choice 

215 

XII. 

The Making of St. John 

231 


vii 


CONTENTS 


XIII. 

Christ the Foundation 

244 

XIV. 

The Spirit of Christmas — 



1. Christmas Giving 

260 


2. Christmas Living 

262 


3. Keeping Christmas 

265 

XV. 

Peace in the Soul 

268 

XVI. 

Peace and Immortality 

278 


vm 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 



I 

SHIPS AND HAVENS 


I 


PILGRIMS OF THE SEA 



}F all the things that man has made, none 


is so full of interest and charm, none pos- 
sesses so distinct a life and character of its own, 
as a ship. 

“ Ships are but boards,” says Shylock in 
The Merchant of Venice . But we feel that this 
is a thoroughly wooden opinion, one of those 
literal judgments which stick to the facts and 
miss the truth. Ships have something more in 
them than the timbers of which they are made. 
There is a spirit within their ribs, a signifi- 
cance in their histories. 

The common language in which we speak 
of them is an unconscious confession of this 
feeling. We say of a ship, “She sails well. 
She minds her helm quickly. We wish her a 
prosperous voyage.” We endow her with per- 
sonality; and, as if to acknowledge the full 
measure of our interest, we express it in terms 
which belong to the more interesting sex. 


1 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


One reason for this is undoubtedly the fact 
that the ship appears to us as a traveller to 
an unseen, and often an unknown, haven. It 
is the element of mystery, of adventure, that 
fascinates our imagination, and draws our sym- 
pathy after it. When this is wanting, the ship 
loses something of her enchantment. 

There is a little cottage where I have spent 
many summers on the sleepy southern shore of 
Long Island. From the white porch we could 
look out upon a shallow, land-locked bay. 
There we saw, on every sunny day, a score of 
sailboats, flickering to and fro on the bright 
circle of water, with no aim but their own mo- 
tion in the pleasant breeze. It was a flock 
of little play-ships, — it brought no stir to the 
thought, no thrill to the emotions. 

From the upper windows of the house the 
outlook surpassed a long line of ragged sand- 
dunes, and ranged across 

“ The unplumbed , salt , estranging sea ” 

There went the real ships, of all shapes and 
sizes, of all rigs and models; the great steamers, 
building an airy pillar of cloud by day, a flash- 
ing pillar of fire by night; the ragged coasters, 
with their patched and dingy sails; the slim, 
swift yachts, hurrying by in gala dress, as if in 
2 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


haste to arrive at some distant, merry festival 
of Neptune’s court. Sometimes they passed in 
groups, like flights of plover; sometimes in sin- 
gle file, like a flock of wild swans; sometimes 
separate and lonely, one appearing and vanish- 
ing before the next hove in sight. 

When the wind was from the north they 
hugged the shore. With a glass one could see 
the wrinkled, weather-beaten face of the man 
at the wheel, and the short pipe smoking be- 
tween his lips. When the wind was southerly 
and strong they kept far away, creeping along 
the rim of the horizon. On a fair breeze they 
dashed along, wing and wing, with easy, level 
motion. When the wind was contrary they 
came beating in and out, close-hauled, tossing 
and labouring over the waves. It was a vision 
of endless variety and delight. But behind it 
all, giving life and interest to the scene, was the 
invisible thought of the desired haven. 

Wdiither is she travelling, that long, four- 
masted schooner, with all her sails set to catch 
the fickle northwest breeze? Is it in some lan- 
guid bay of the West Indies, or in some rocky 
harbour of Patagonia, amid the rigours of the 
far southern winter, that she will cast anchor? 
Wfliere is she bound, that dark little tramp- 
steamer, trailing voluminous black smoke be- 
3 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


hind her, and buffeting her way to the eastward 
in the teeth of the rising gale? Is it in some 
sunlit port among the bare purple hills of Spain, 
or in the cool shadows of some forest-clad Nor- 
wegian fiord, that she will find her moorings? 
Whither away, ye ships ? What haven ? 

How often, and how exquisitely, this ques- 
tion of ships and havens has been expressed 
by the poets (in prose and verse), who translate 
our thoughts for us. Longfellow recalls a 
dream of his childhood in the seaport town of 
Portland: 

“7 remember the black wharves and the slips , 

And the sea-tides tossing free; 

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips , 

And the beauty and mystery of the ships , 

And the magic of the sea. 

And the voice of that wayward song 

Is singing and saying still : 

i A boy's will is the wind's will y 

And the thoughts of youth are long , long thoughts' " 

George William Curtis wanders down to the 
Battery, and meditates on “Sea from Shore”: 
“The sails were shaken out, and the ship began 
to move. It was a fair breeze perhaps, and no 
steamer was needed to tow her away. She 
receded down the bay. Friends turned back, 
— I could not see them, — and waved their 
4 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


hands, and wiped their eyes, and went home 
to dinner. Farther and farther from the ships 
at anchor, the lessening vessel became single 
and solitary upon the water. The sun sank 
in the west; but I watched her still. Every 
flash of her sails, as she tacked and turned, 
thrilled my heart. ... I did not know the 
consignees nor the name of the vessel. I had 
shipped no adventure, nor risked any insurance, 
nor made any bet, but my eyes clung to her as 
Ariadne’s to the fading sail of Theseus.” 

And here is a bit of Rudyard Kipling’s gusty 
music from The Seven Seas: 

“ The Liner she’s a lady , an 9 she never looks nor 9 eeds — 
The Man-o 9 -War’s 9 er ’ usband , an ’e gives 9 er all she needs ; 
But , oh , the little cargo-boats , that sail the wet seas roun’. 
They’re just the same as you and me, a-plyin’ up an’ down!” 

But it is Wordsworth who has given the best 
expression to the feeling that rises within us at 
sight of a journeying ship: 

“ Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go? 
Fresh as a lark mounting at break of day 
Festively she puts forth in trim array ; 

Is she for tropic suns, or polar snow ? 

What boots the inquiry ? — Neither friend nor foe 
She cares for ; let her travel where she may 
She finds familiar friends, a beaten way 
Ever before her, and a wind to blow . 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


Yet still I ash, what haven is her mark? 

And, almost as it was when ships were rare 
{From time to time 9 like Pilgrims , here and there 
Crossing the waters ) , doubt , and something darky 
Of the old Sea some reverential fear 
Is with me at thy farewell , joyous Bark 1 ” 

Is not this a parable of the way in which we 
look out, in our thoughtful moods, upon the 
ocean of human life, and the men and women 
who are voyaging upon it? In them also the 
deepest element of interest is that they are 
in motion. They are all going somewhither. 
They are distinct, individual, separate. We 
single them out one by one. Each is a voy- 
ager, with a port to seek, a course to run, a 
fortune to experience. The most interesting 
question that we can ask in regard to them is: 
Whither bound ? What haven ? 

But this inquiry comes to us now not as an 
idle or a curious question. For, first of all, we 
feel that these men and women are not strangers 
to us. We know why we take a personal in- 
terest in one more than in another. We know 
why we “ pursue them with a lover’s look.” 
It is as if the “ joyous Bark” carried some one 
that we knew, as if we could see a familiar face 
above the bulwarks, and hear a well-beloved 
voice hailing us across the waves. And then 
6 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


we realize that we also are en voyage . We do 
not stand on the shore as spectators; we, too, 
are out on the ocean, sailing. All the “rever- 
ential fear of the old Sea,” the peril, the mystery, 
the charm, of the voyage, come home to our 
own experience. The question becomes press- 
ing, urgent, importunate, as we enter into the 
depth of its meaning. Surely there is nothing 
that we can ever ask ourselves in which we have 
a closer, deeper interest, or to which we need 
to find a clearer, truer answer, than this simple, 
direct question: What is our desired haven in 
the venturesome voyage of life ? 

II 

WHITHER BOUND? 

Wherever you are, and whoever you may 
be, there is one thing in which you and I are 
just alike at this moment, and in all the moments 
of our existence. We are not at rest; we are 
on a journey. Our life is a movement, a ten- 
dency, a steady, ceaseless progress towards an 
unseen goal. We are gaining something, or 
losing something, every day. Even when our 
position and our character seem to remain pre- 
cisely the same, they are changing. For the 
mere advance of time is a change. It is not 

7 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


the same thing to have a bare field in January 
and in July. The season makes the difference. 
The limitations that are childlike in the child 
are childish in the man. 

Everything that we do is a step in one direc- 
tion or another. Even the failure to do some- 
thing is in itself a deed. It sets us forward or 
backward. The action of the negative pole of 
a magnetic needle is just as real as the action of 
the positive pole. To decline is to accept — the 
other alternative. 

Are you richer to-day than you were yester- 
day ? No ? Then you are a little poorer. Are 
you better to-day than you were yesterday? 
No? Then you are a little worse. Are you 
nearer to your port to-day than you were yes- 
terday? Yes, — you must be a little nearer to 
some port or other; for since your ship was first 
launched upon the sea of life, you have never 
been still for a single moment; the sea is too 
deep, you could not find an anchorage if you 
would; there can be no pause until you come 
into port. 

But what is it, then, the haven towards which 
you are making? What is the goal that you 
desire and hope to reach ? What is the end of 
life towards which you are drifting or steering? 

There are three ways in which we may look 
8 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


at this question, depending upon the point of 
view from which we regard human existence. 

When we think of it as a work, the question 
is, “What do we desire to accomplish?” 

When we think of it as a growth, a devel- 
opment, a personal unfolding, the question is, 
“What do we desire to become?” 

When we think of it as an experience, a des- 
tiny, the question is, “What do we desire to 
become of us?” 

Do not imagine for an instant that these 
questions can be really separated. They are 
interwoven. They cross each other from end 
to end of the web of life. The answer to one 
question determines the answer to the others. 
We cannot divide our work from ourselves, nor 
isolate our future from our qualities. A ship 
might as well try to sail north with her jib, and 
east with her foresail, and south with her main- 
sail, as a man to go one way in conduct, and 
another way in character, and another way in 
destiny. 

What we do belongs to what we are; and 
what we are is what becomes of us. 

And yet, as a matter of fact, there is a differ- 
ence in these three standpoints from which we 
may look at our life; and this difference not only 
makes a little variation in the view that we 
9 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


take of our existence, but also influences un- 
consciously our manner of thinking and speak- 
ing about it. Most of the misunderstandings 
that arise when we are talking about life come 
from a failure to remember this. We are look- 
ing at the same thing, but we are looking from 
opposite corners of the room. We are discuss- 
ing the same subject, but in different dialects. 

Some people — perhaps the majority — are of 
a practical turn of mind. Life seems to them 
principally an affair of definite labour directed 
to certain positive results. They are usually 
thinking about what they are to do in the world, 
and what they are to get for it. It is a ques- 
tion of occupation, of accomplishment, of work 
and wages. 

Other people — and I think almost all serious- 
minded people when they are young, and life 
still appears fresh and wonderful to them — re- 
gard their existence from the standpoint of 
sentiment, of feeling, of personality. They 
have their favourite characters in history or 
fiction, whom they admire and tiy to imitate. 
They have their ideals, which they seek and 
hope to realize. Some vision of triumph over 
obstacles, and victory over enemies, some model 
of manhood or womanhood, shines before them. 
By that standard they test and measure them- 
10 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


selves. Towards that end they direct their 
efforts. The question of life, for them, is a 
question of attainment, of self-discipline, of 
self -development. 

Other people — and I suppose we may say all 
people at some time or other in their experience 
— catch a glimpse of life in still wider and more 
mysterious relations. They see that it is not 
really, for any one of us, an independent and 
self-centred and self-controlled affair. They 
feel that its issues run out far beyond what we 
can see in this world. They have a deep sense 
of a future state of being towards which we are 
all inevitably moving. This movement can- 
not be a matter of chance. It must be under 
law, under responsibility, under guidance. It 
cannot be a matter of indifference to us. It 
ought to be the object of our most earnest con- 
cern, our most careful choice, our most deter- 
mined endeavour. If there is a port beyond 
the horizon, we should know where it lies and 
how to win it. And so the question of life, in 
these profound moods which come to all of us, 
presents itself as a question of destiny. 

Now, if we are to understand each other, if 
we are to get a view of the subject which shall 
be anything like a well-rounded view, a complete 
view, we must look at the question from all 
11 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


three sides. We must ask ourselves: What is 
our desired haven, first, in achievement; and 
second, in character; and last, in destiny? 

Ill 

THE HAVEN OF WORK 

Surely we ought to know what it is that we 
really want to do in the world, what practical 
result we desire to accomplish with our lives. 
And this is a question which it will be very wise 
to ask and answer before we determine what 
particular means we shall use in order to per- 
form our chosen work and to secure the desired 
result. A man ought to know what he pro- 
poses to make before he selects and prepares 
his tools. A captain should have a clear idea 
of what port he is to reach before he attempts 
to lay his course and determine his manner of 
sailing. 

All these minor questions of ways and means 
must come afterwards. They cannot be settled 
at the outset. They depend on circumstances. 
They change with the seasons. They are many 
paths to the same end. One may be best to- 
day; another may be best to-morrow. The 
wind and the tide make a difference. One way 
may be best for you, another way for me. The 
U 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 

build of the ship must be taken into considera- 
tion. A flat-bottomed craft does best in the 
shallow water, along shore. A deep keel is for 
the open sea. 

But before we make up our minds how to 
steer from day to day, we must know where we 
are going in the long run. Then we can shape 
our course to fit our purpose. We can learn 
how to meet emergencies as they arise. We 
can change our direction to avoid obstacles and 
dangers. If we keep the thought of our de- 
sired haven clearly before us, all the other points 
can be more easily and wisely settled; and how- 
ever devious and difficult the voyage may be, 
it will be a success when we get there. 

I am quite sure that a great deal of the con- 
fusion and perplexity of youth, and a great deal 
of the restlessness and fickleness which older 
people often criticize so severely and so unjustly, 
come from the attempt to choose an occupation 
in life before the greater question of the real 
object of our life-work has been fairly faced 
and settled. “What are you going to do when 
you grow up?” This is the favourite conun- 
drum which the kind aunts and uncles put to 
the boys when they come home from school; 
and of late they are beginning to put it to the 
girls also, since it has been reluctantly admitted 
13 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


that a girl may rightly have something to say 
about what she would like to do in the world. 
But how is it possible to make anything more 
than a blind guess at the answer, unless the boy 
or the girl has some idea of the practical end 
which is to be worked for. To choose a trade, 
a business, a profession, without knowing what 
kind of a result you want to get out of your 
labour, is to set sail in the dark. It is to have 
a course, but no haven; an employment, but 
no vocation. 

There are really only four great practical ends 
for which men and women can work in this 
world, — Pleasure, Wealth, Fame, and Usefulness. 
We owe it to ourselves to consider them carefully, 
and to make up our minds which of them is to 
be our chief object in life. 

Pleasure is one aim in life, and there are a 
great many people who are following it, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, as the main end of 
all their efforts. Now, pleasure is a word which 
has a double meaning. It may mean the satis- 
faction of all the normal desires of our manhood 
in their due proportion, and in this sense it is a 
high and noble end. There is a pleasure in the 
intelligent exercise of all our faculties, in the 
friendship of nature, in the perception of truth, 
in the generosity of love, in the achievements of 
14 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


heroism, in the deeds of beneficence, in the 
triumphs of self-sacrifice. “It is not to taste 
sweet things,” says Carlyle, “but to do true and 
noble things, and vindicate himself under God’s 
Heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest 
son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way 
of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles 
into a hero.” 

But pleasure as we commonly speak of it 
means something very different from this. It 
denotes the immediate gratification of our physi- 
cal senses and appetites and inclinations. There 
is a free gift of pleasant sensation attached by 
the Creator to the fulfilment of our natural 
propensions. The taking of food, for example, 
not only nourishes the body, but also gratifies 
the palate; the quenching of thirst is agreeable 
to the senses as well as necessary to the mainte- 
nance of life. No sane and wholesome thinker 
has ventured to deny that it is lawful and wise 
to receive this gratuitous gift of pleasure, and 
rejoice in it, as it comes to us in this world 
wherein God has caused to grow “every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.” 
But when we make the reception of the agree- 
able sensation the chief end and motive of our 
action, when we direct our will and our effort 
to the attainment of this end, then we enter 
15 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


upon a pleasure-seeking life. We make that 
which should be our servant to refresh and cheer 
us, our master to direct and rule and drive us. 

The evil nature of this transformation is 
suggested in the very names which we give to 
human conduct in which the gratification of 
the senses has become the controlling purpose. 
The man who lives for the sake of the enjoy- 
ment that he gets out of eating and drinking is 
a glutton or a drunkard. The man who mea- 
sures the success and happiness of his life by 
its physical sensations, whether they be coarse 
and brutal or delicate and refined, is a voluptu- 
ary. 

A pleasure-seeking life, in this sense, when we 
think of it clearly and carefully, is one which 
has no real end or goal outside of itself. Its 
aim is unreal and transitory, a passing thrill in 
nerves that decay, an experience that leads 
nowhere, and leaves nothing behind it. Robert 
Burns knew the truth of what he wrote: 

“ But pleasures are like poppies spread , 

You seize the flower , the bloom is shed 1 99 

The man who chooses pleasure as the object 
of his life has no real haven, but is like a boat 
that beats up and down and drifts to and fro, 
merely to feel the motion of the waves and the 
16 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 

impulse of the wind. When the voyage of life 
is done he has reached no port, he has accom- 
plished nothing. 

One of the wisest of the ancients, the Stoic 
philosopher Seneca, wrote a letter to his brother 
Gallio (the Roman governor before whom St. 
Paul was tried in Corinth), in which he speaks 
very frankly about the folly of a voluptuous 
life. “ Those who have permitted pleasure to 
lead the van . . . lose virtue altogether; and 
yet they do not possess pleasure, but are 
possessed by it, and are either tortured by its 
absence, or choked by its excess, being wretched 
if deserted by it, and yet more wretched 
if overwhelmed by it; like those who are caught 
in the shoals of the Syrtes, and at one time are 
stranded on dry ground, and at another tossed 
on the furious billows. ... As we hunt wild 
beasts with toil and peril, and even when they 
are caught find them an anxious possession, for 
they often tear their keepers to pieces, even so 
are great pleasures: they turn out to be great 
evils, and take their owners prisoner.” 

This is the voice of human prudence and 
philosophy. The voice of religion is even more 
clear and piercing. St. Paul says of the plea- 
sure-seekers: “ Whose end is destruction, whose 
god is their belly, whose glory is their shame, 
17 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


who mind earthly things.” And in another 
place, lest we should forget that this is as true 
of women as it is of men, he says: “She that 
liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” 
That saying is profoundly true. It goes to the 
bottom of the subject. A pleasure-seeking life 
is a living death, because its object perishes 
even while it is attained, and at the end nothing 
is left of it but dust and corruption. 

Think of the result of existence in the man 
or woman who has lived chiefly to gratify the 
physical appetites; think of its real emptiness, 
its real repulsiveness, when old age comes, and 
the senses are dulled, and the roses have faded, 
and the lamps at the banquet are smoking and 
expiring, and desire fails, and all that remains 
is the fierce, insatiable, ugly craving for delights 
which have fled for evermore; think of the bitter, 
burning vacancy of such an end, — and you 
must see that pleasure is not a good haven to 
seek in the voyage of life. 

But what of wealth as a desired haven? 
When we attempt to consider this subject we 
have especial need to follow Dr. Samuel John- 
son’s blunt advice and “clear our minds of 
cant.” There is a great deal of foolish railing 
against wealth, which takes for granted, now 
that it is an unsubstantial and illusory good, 
18 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


and now that it is not a good at all, but only an 
unmixed evil, and the root of all other evils. 
Many preachers and moralists talk about wealth 
in this way, but they do not really think about 
it in this way. They know better. And when 
young people discover and observe the curious 
inconsistency between the teacher’s words and 
his thoughts, as illuminated by his conduct, 
they are likely to experience a sense of disap- 
pointment, and a serious revulsion from doc- 
trine which does not seem to be sincere. 

Wealth is simply the visible result of human 
labour, or of the utilization of natural forces 
and products, in such a form that it can be 
exchanged. A gallon of water in a mountain 
lake is not wealth. But the same gallon of 
water conveyed through an aqueduct and de- 
livered in the heart of a great city represents a 
certain amount of wealth, because it has a 
value in relation to the wants of men. A tree 
growing in an inaccessible forest is not wealth. 
But a stick of timber which can be delivered 
in a place where men are building houses is a 
bit of wealth. 

Now, the symbol and measure of wealth is 
money. It is the common standard by which 
the value of different commodities is estimated, 
and the means by which they are exchanged. 

19 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


It is not a dream nor a delusion. It is some- 
thing real and solid. It is deserving of our 
respect under certain conditions and within 
certain limitations. The man who professes an 
absolute contempt for money is either a little 
of a fool or a good deal of a fraud. It repre- 
sents a product of labour and a form of power. 
It is worth working for. When a man has won 
it, there it is — a fact and a force. He can han- 
dle it, use it, dispose of it, as he chooses. 

But stop a moment; let us think! Is that 
altogether true? It is partly true, no doubt; 
for every particle of wealth, or of its symbol, 
money, is an actual possession of which its 
owner can dispose. But it is not the whole 
truth; for the fact is that he must dispose of it, 
because that is the only way in which it becomes 
available as wealth. A piece of money in an 
old stocking is no more than a leaf upon a tree. 
It is only when the coin is taken out and used 
that it becomes of value. And the nature of 
the value depends upon the quality of the 
use. 

Moreover, it is not true that a man can dis- 
pose of his money as he chooses. The purposes 
for which it can be used are strictly bounded. 
There are many things that he cannot buy 
with it; for example, health, long life, wisdom, 
20 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 

a cheerful spirit, a clear conscience, peace of 
mind, a contented heart. 

You never see the stock called Happiness 
quoted on the exchange. How high would it 
range, think you, — a hundred shares of Happi- 
ness Preferred, guaranteed seven per cent? 

And there are some things that a man cannot 
do with his wealth. For instance, he cannot 
carry it with him when he dies. No system of 
transfer has been established between the two 
worlds; and a large balance here does not mean 
a balance on the other side of the grave. The 
property of Dives did not fall in value when he 
died, and yet he became a pauper in the twin- 
kling of an eye. 

There is no question but that those who live 
to win wealth in this world have a more real 
and substantial end in view than the mere 
pleasure-seekers. But the thing that we ought 
to understand and remember is precisely what 
that end is. It is the acquisition in our hands 
of a certain thing whose possession is very brief, 
and whose value depends entirely upon the use 
to which it is put. Now, if we make the mere 
gaining of that thing the desired haven of our 
life, we certainly spend our strength for naught, 
and our labour for that which satisfieth not. 
We narrow and contract our whole existence. 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


We degrade it by making it terminate upon 
something which is only a sign, a symbol, be- 
hind which we see no worthy and enduring 
reality. It is for this reason that the “blind 
vice” of avarice, as Juvenal calls it, has been 
particularly despised by the wise of all lands 
and ages. There is no other fault that so 
quickly makes the heart small and hard. 

“They soon grow old who grope for gold 
In marts where all is bought and sold; 

Who live for self , and on some shelf 
In darkened vaults hoard up their pelf ; 

Cankered and crusted o’er with mould , 

For them their youth itself is old.” 

Nor is there any other service that appears more 
unprofitable and ridiculous in the end, when 
the reward for which the money-maker has 
given his life is stripped away from him with a 
single touch, and he is left with his trouble 
for his pains. 

“ If thou art rich , thou’rt poor; 

For like an ass whose back with ingots bows , 

Thou bear’ st thy heavy burden but a journey , 

And death unloads thee.” 

But perhaps you imagine that no one is in 
danger of making that mistake, no one is so 
22 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


foolish as to seek wealth merely for its own sake. 
Do you think so? Then, what shall we say of 
that large class of men, so prominent and so 
influential in modern society, whose energies are 
desperately consecrated to the winning of great 
fortunes ? 

So far as their life speaks for them, they have 
no real ambition beyond that. They are not 
the leaders in noble causes, the sustainers of 
beneficent enterprises. They have no refined 
and elevated tastes to gratify. They are not 
the promoters of art or science, the adorners 
of their city with splendid buildings, the sup- 
porters of humane and beautiful charities. 
They have no large plans, no high and generous 
purposes. They have no public spirit, only an 
intense private greed. All that we can say of 
them is that they are rich, and that they evi- 
dently want to be richer. 

They sit like gigantic fowls brooding upon 
nests of golden eggs, which never hatch. Their 
one desire is not to bring anything out of the 
eggs, but to get more eggs into their nest. It 
is a form of lunacy, — auromania. 

But let us not suppose that these notorious 
examples are the only ones who are touched 
with this insanity. It is just the same in the 
man who is embittered by failure, as in the 
23 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


man who is elated by success; just the same in 
those who make it the chief end of life to raise 
their hundreds of dollars to thousands, as in 
those who express their ambition in terms of 
seven figures. 

Covetousness is idolatry of wealth. It may 
be paid to a little idol as well as to a big one. 
Avarice may be married to Poverty, and then 
its offspring is named Envy; or it may be mar- 
ried to Riches, and then its children are called 
Purse-pride and Meanness. Some people sell 
their lives for heaps of treasure, and some for a 
scant thirty pieces of silver, and some for noth- 
ing better than a promissory note of fortune, 
without endorsement. 

There are multitudes of people in the world 
to-day who are steering and sailing for Ophir, 
simply because it is the land of gold. What 
will they do if they reach their desired haven ? 
They do not know. They do not even ask the 
question. They will be rich. They will sit 
down on their gold. 

Let us look our desires squarely in the face ! 
To win riches, to have a certain balance in the 
bank and a certain rating on the exchange, is 
a real object, a definite object; but it is a fright- 
fully small object for the devotion of a human 
life, and a bitterly disappointing compensation 
24 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


for the loss of an immortal soul. If wealth is 
our desired haven, we may be sure that it will 
not satisfy us when we reach it. 

Well, then, what shall we say of fame as the 
chief end of life? Here, again, we must be 
careful to discriminate between the thing itself 
and other things which are often confused with 
it. Fame is simply what our fellow-men think 
and say of us. It may be world-wide; it may 
only reach to a single country or city; it may be 
confined to a narrow circle of society. Trans- 
lated in one way, fame is glory; translated in 
another way, it is merely notoriety. It is a 
thing which exists, of course; for the thoughts 
of other people about us are just as actual as 
our thoughts about ourselves, or as the charac- 
ter and conduct with which those thoughts are 
concerned. But the three things do not always 
correspond. 

You remember what Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes says, in The Autocrat of the Breakfast- 
Table, about the three Johns: 

1. The real John; known only to his Maker* 

2. John’s ideal John; never the real one, and 
often very unlike him. 

3. Thomas’s ideal John; never the real John, 
nor John’s John, but often very unlike either. 

Now, the particular object of the life that 
25 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


makes fame its goal is this last John. Its suc- 
cess consists in the report of other people’s 
thoughts and remarks about us. Bare, naked 
fame, however great it may be, can never bring 
us anything more than an instantaneous pho- 
tograph of the way we look to other men. 

Consider what it is worth. It may be good 
or bad, flattering or painfully truthful. People 
are celebrated sometimes for their vices, some- 
times for their follies. Anything out of the 
ordinary line will attract notice. Notoriety 
may be purchased by a colossal extravagance or 
a monumental absurdity. A person has been 
made notorious simply by showing himself 
“more kinds of a fool” than any one else in 
the community. 

Many men would be famous for their vanity 
alone, if it were not so common that it no longer 
serves as a mark of distinction. We often 
fancy that we are occupying a large place in the 
attention of the world, when really we do not 
even fill a pin-hole. 

To be governed in our course of life by a tim- 
orous consideration of what the world will think 
of us is to be even lighter and more fickle than 
a weathercock. It is to be blown about by winds 
so small and slight that they could not even lift 
a straw outside of our own versatile imagination. 

26 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 

For what is “the world,” for whose admiration, 
or envy, or mere notice, we are willing to give so 
much? “Mount up,” says a wise man, “in a 
monomania of vanity, the number of those who 
bestow some passing thought upon you, as high 
as you dare; and what is this ‘world’ but a very 
few miserable items of human existence, which, 
when they disappear, none will miss, any more 
than they will miss thyself?” 

There is one point in which fame differs very 
essentially from wealth and pleasure. If it 
comes to us without being well earned it cannot 
possibly be enjoyed. A pleasure may arrive by 
chance, and still it will be pleasant. A sum of 
money may be won by a gambler, and still it is 
real money; he can spend it as he pleases. But 
fame without a corresponding merit is simply 
an unmitigated burden. I cannot imagine a 
more miserable position than that of the poor 
scribbler who allowed his acquaintances to con- 
gratulate him as the writer of George Eliot’s 
early stories. To have the name of great wis- 
dom, and at the same time to be a very foolish 
person, is to walk through the world in a suit 
of armour so much too big and too heavy for 
you that it makes every step a painful effort. 
To have a fine reputation and a mean character 
is to live a lie and die a sham. And this is the 
27 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


danger to which every one who seeks directly 
and primarily for fame is exposed. 

One thing is certain in regard to fame: for 
most of us it will be very brief in itself; for all 
of us it will be transient in our enjoyment of it. 

When death has dropped the curtain we shall 
hear no more applause. And though we fondly 
dream that it will continue after we have left 
the stage, we do not realize how quickly it will 
die away in silence, while the audience turns to 
look at the new actor and the next scene. Our 
position in society will be filled as soon as it is 
vacated, and our name remembered only for a 
moment, — except, please God, by a few who 
have learned to love us, not because of fame, but 
because we have helped them and done them 
some good. 

xThis thought brings us, you see, within clear 
sight of the fourth practical aim in life, — the 
one end that is really worth working for, — use- 
fulness. To desire and strive to be of some 
service to the world, to aim at doing something 
which shall really increase the happiness and 
welfare and virtue of mankind — this is a choice 
which is possible for all of us; and surely it is 
a good haven to sail for. 

The more we think of it, the more attractive 
and desirable it becomes. To do some work 
28 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; 
to make our toil count for something in adding 
to the sum total of what is actually profitable 
for humanity; to make two blades of grass 
grow where one grew before, or, better still, to 
make one wholesome idea take root in a mind 
that was bare and fallow; to make our example 
count for something on the side of honesty, 
and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, 
and love — this is an aim for life which is very 
wide, as wide as the world, and yet very defi- 
nite, as clear as light. It is not in the least 
vague. It is only free; it has the power to em- 
body itself in a thousand forms without changing 
its character. Those who seek it know what it 
means, however it may be expressed. It is 
real and genuine and satisfying. There is 
nothing beyond it, because there can be no 
higher practical result of effort. It is the 
translation, through many languages, of the 
true, divine purpose of all the work and labour 
that is done beneath the sun, into one final, 
universal word. It is the active consciousness 
of personal harmony with the will of God who 
worketh hitherto. 

To have this for the chief aim in life ennobles 
and dignifies all that it touches. Wealth that 
comes as the reward of usefulness can be ac- 
29 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


cepted with honour; and, consecrated to further 
usefulness, it becomes royal. Fame that comes 
from noble service, the gratitude of men, be 
they few or many, to one who has done them 
good, is true glory; and the influence that it 
brings is as near to godlike power as anything 
that man can attain. But whether these tem- 
poral rewards are bestowed upon us or not, 
the real desire of the soul is satisfied just in 
being useful. The pleasantest word that a 
man can hear at the close of the day, whispered 
in secret to his soul, is, “Well done, good and 
faithful servant!’ 5 

Christ tells us this: “He that loseth his life 
shall find it.” “Whosoever will be great among 
you, let him be your minister; and whosoever 
will be chief among you, let him be your ser- 
vant.” 

“ Life is divine when duty is a joy ” 

Do we accept these sailing orders ? Is it really 
the desired haven of all our activity to do some 
good in the world; to carry our share of the 
great world’s burden which must be borne, to 
bring our lading of treasure, be it small or great, 
safely into the port of usefulness? I wonder 
how many of us have faced the question and 
settled it. It goes very deep. 

30 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 
IV 

THE HAVEN OF CHARACTER 

But deeper still the question goes when we 
look at it in another light. Our life is made up, 
not of actions alone, but of thoughts and feel- 
ings and habitual affections. These taken all 
together constitute what we call our present 
character. In their tendencies and impulses 
and dominant desires they constitute our fu- 
ture character, towards which we are moving 
as a ship to her haven. 

What is it, then, for you and me, this intimate 
ideal, this distant self, this hidden form of per- 
sonality which is our goal? 

I am sure that we do not often enough put 
the problem clearly before us in this shape. 
We all dream of the future, especially when we 
are young. But our dreams are too much like 
the modern stage, full of elaborate scenery and 
machinery, crowded with startling effects and 
brilliant costumes and magical transformations, 
but strangely vacant of all real character. 

The stuff of which our day-dreams are made 
is for the most part of very cheap material. 
We seldom weave into them the threads of our 
inmost spiritual life. We build castles in Spain, 
and forecast adventures in Bohemia. But the 
31 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


castle is without a real master. The hero of 
the adventure is vague and misty. We do not 
clearly recognize his face, or know what is in 
his heart. 

We picture ourselves as living here or there; 
we imagine ourselves as members of a certain 
circle of society, taking our places among the 
rich, the powerful, the “smart set.” We fancy 
ourselves going through the various experiences 
of life, a fortunate marriage, a successful busi- 
ness career, a literary triumph, a political vic- 
tory. Or perhaps, if our imagination is of a 
more sombre type, we foreshadow ourselves in 
circumstances of defeat and disappointment and 
adversity. But in all these reveries we do not 
really think deeply of our Selves. We do not 
stay to ask what manner of men and women we 
shall be, when we are living here or there, or 
doing thus or so. 

Yet it is an important question, — very much 
more important, in fact, than the thousand and 
one trifling interrogatories about the future with 
which we amuse our idle hours. 

And the strange thing is that, though our 
ideal of future character is so often hidden from 
us, overlooked, forgotten, it is always there, 
and always potently, though unconsciously, 
shaping our course in life. “Every one,” says 
32 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


Cervantes, “is the son of his own works.” But 
his works do not come out of the air, by chance. 
They are wrought out in a secret, instinctive 
harmony with a conception of character which 
we inwardly acknowledge as possible and likely 
for us. 

When we choose between two lines of conduct, 
between a mean action and a noble one, we 
choose also between two persons, both bearing 
our name, the one representing what is best in 
us, the other embodying what is worst. When 
we vacillate and alternate between them, we 
veer, as the man in Robert Louis Stevenson’s 
story veered, between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

We say that we “make up our minds” to do 
a certain thing or not to do it, to resist a certain 
temptation or to yield to it. It is true. We 
“make up our minds” in a deeper sense than we 
remember. In every case the ultimate decision 
is between two future selves, one with whom 
the virtue is harmonious, another with whom 
the vice is consistent. To one of these two 
figures, dimly concealed behind the action, we 
move forward. What we forget is that, when 
the forward step is taken, the shadow will be 
myself. Character is eternal destiny. 

There is a profound remark in George Eliot’s 
Middlemarch which throws light far down into 
33 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


the abyss of many a lost life. “We are on 
a perilous margin when we begin to look pas- 
sively at our future selves, and see our own 
figures led with dull consent into insipid mis- 
doing and shabby achievement.” But there is 
a brighter side to this same truth of life philoso- 
phy. We are on a path which leads upward, 
by sure and steady steps, when we begin to 
look at our future selves with eyes of noble hope 
and clear purpose, and see our figures climbing, 
with patient, dauntless effort, towards the 
heights of true manhood and womanhood. 
Visions like these are Joseph’s dreams. They 
are stars for guidance. They are sheaves of 
promise. The very memory of them, if we 
cherish it, is a power of pure restraint and gen- 
erous inspiration. 

O for a new generation of day-dreamers, 
young men and maidens who shall behold 
visions, idealists who shall see themselves as the 
heroes of coming conflicts, the heroines of yet 
unwritten epics of triumphant compassion and 
stainless love. From their hearts shall spring 
the renaissance of faith and hope. The ancient 
charm of true romance shall flow forth again 
to glorify the world in the brightness of their 
ardent eyes, — 

“ The light that never was on land or sea , 

The consecration and the poet's dream ” 

34 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 

As they go out from the fair gardens of a vision- 
ary youth into the wide, confused, turbulent 
field of life, they will bring with them the march- 
ing music of a high resolve. They will strive 
to fulfil the fine prophecy of their own best de- 
sires. They will not ask whether life is worth 
living, — they will make it so. They will trans- 
form the sordid “ struggle for existence” into 
a glorious effort to become that which they have 
admired and loved. 

But such a new generation is possible only 
through the regenerating power of the truth 
that “a man’s life consisteth not in the abun- 
dance of the things that he possesseth.” We 
must learn to recognize the real realities, and to 
hold them far above the perishing trappings of 
existence which men call real. 

“ The glory of our life below 
Comes not from what we do or what we know. 

But dwells for evermore in what we are. 9 * 

“He only is advancing in life,” says John 
Huskin, “whose heart is getting softer, whose 
blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
spirit is entering into Living peace. And the 
men who have this life in them are the true 
lords or kings of the earth — they, and they 
only.” 

Now we see what is meant by this question 
35 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


of the desired haven in character. What man- 
ner of men and women do we truly hope and 
wish to become? 

The number of ideals seems infinite. But, 
after all, there are only two great types. St. 
Paul calls them “the carnal” and “the spiri- 
tual”; and I know of no better names. 

The carnal type of character, weak or strong, 
clever or stupid, is always self-ruled, governed 
by its own appetites and passions, seeking its 
own ends, and, even when conformed to some 
outward law or code of honour, obedient only 
because it finds its own advantage or comfort 
therein. There is many a man who stands 
upright only because the pressure of the crowd 
makes it inconvenient for him to stoop. “The 
churl in spirit” may speak fair words because 
of those who hear; but in his heart he says the 
thing that pleases him, which is vile. 

The spiritual type of character is divinely 
ruled, submissive to a higher law, doing another 
will than its own, seeking the ends of virtue and 
holiness and unselfish love. It may have many 
inward struggles, many defeats, many bitter 
renunciations and regrets. It may appear far 
less peaceful, orderly, self-satisfied, than some 
of those who are secretly following the other 
ideal. Many a saint in the making seems to 
30 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


be marred by faults and conflicts from which 
the smug, careful, reputable sensualist is exempt. 
The difference between the two is not one of 
position. It is one of direction. The one, 
however high he stands, is moving down. The 
other, however low he starts, is moving up. 

We all know who it is that stands at the very 
summit of the spiritual pathway, — Jesus Christ, 
the Son of God, who became a perfect man, 
leaving us an example that we should follow 
in his steps. We know, too, the steps in which 
he trod, — obedience, devotion, purity, truth- 
fulness, kindness, resistance of temptation, self- 
sacrifice. And we know the result of following 
him, until we come, in the unity of the faith and 
of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a 
perfect manhood, unto the measure of the stat- 
ure of the fulness of Christ. 

Which type of character do we honestly de- 
sire and expect to reach ? Let us not indulge in 
any delusions about it. Just as surely as our 
faces are hardening into a certain expression, 
ugly or pleasant, and our bodies are moving 
towards a certain condition of health, sound or 
diseased, so surely are our souls moving towards 
a certain type of character. Along which line 
are we looking and steering? — along the line 
that leads to an older, grayer, stiffer likeness of 
37 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


our present selves, with all our selfishness and 
pride and impurity and inconsistency and dis- 
content confirmed and hardened; or the line 
that ends in likeness to Christ? 

Surely we are voyaging blindly unless we 
know what haven of character our souls are 
seeking. Surely we are making a poor and 
fatal choice, unless we direct our course to the 
highest and the noblest goal. To know Christ 
is life eternal. To become like Christ is suc- 
cess everlasting. 


V 

THE LAST PORT 

There is still one more way of putting this- 
question about our desired haven, — a way per- 
haps more common than the others, and there- 
fore probably more natural, though I cannot 
believe that it is more important. It is, in 
fact, simply a carrying on of the first two ques- 
tions beyond the horizon of mortal sight, a 
prolongation of the voyage of life upon the 
ocean of eternity. 

Almost all of us have an expectation, however 
dim and misty, of an existence of some kind 
after we have crossed the bar of death. Even 
those who do not believe that this existence will 
38 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


be conscious, those who suppose that death ends 
all, so far as our thought and feeling are con- 
cerned, and that the soul goes out when the 
heart stops, — even the doubters of immortality 
foresee a certain kind of a haven for their lives 
in the deep, dreamless, endless sleep of oblivion. 
There is no one now living who does not owe 
a clear and definite answer to the question: 
Where do you wish and expect to go when you 
die? 

I think we have no right to try to separate 
this question of our haven after death from the 
questions in regard to our present aspirations 
and efforts in conduct and character. For every 
one who considers it soberly must see that our 
future destiny cannot possibly be anything 
else than the consequence of our present life. 
Whether it be a state of spiritual blessedness, 
or an experience of spiritual woe, or simply a 
blank extinction, it will come ag the result of 
the deeds done in the body. It will be the 
fitting and inevitable arrival at a goal towards 
which we have been moving in all our actions, 
and for which we have been preparing ourselves 
by all the secret affections and hopes and beliefs 
which we are daily working into our characters. 

But there is a reason, after all, and a very 
profound reason, why we should sometimes put 
39 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


this question of our desired haven after death 
in a distinct form, and why we should try to 
give a true and honest answer to it, with an 
outlook that goes beyond the grave. 

It is because the answer will certainly deter- 
mine our conduct now, and there is every reason 
to believe that it will affect the result hereafter. 

Men say that the future life is only a possi- 
bility, or at best a probability, and that it is 
foolish to waste our present existence in the 
consideration of problems to which the only 
answer must be a “perhaps,” or “I hope so,” 
or “I believe so.” But is it not one of the very 
conditions of our advance, even in this world, 
that we should be forever going forward along 
lines which lie altogether in the region of the 
probable, and for which we have no better 
security than our own expectation and wish that 
they shall lead us to the truth, anticipated, but 
as yet unproved and really unknown ? 

“So far as man stands for anything,” writes 
Professor William James, the psychologist, in The 
Will to Believe , “and is productive or origina- 
tive at all, his entire vital function may be said 
to have to deal with mayhes . Not a victory is 
gained, not a deed of faithfulness or courage 
is done, except upon a maybe; not a service, 
not a sally of generosity, not a scientific explora- 
40 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


tion or experiment or text-book, that may not 
be a mistake. It is only by risking our persons 
from one hour to another that we live at all. 
And often enough our faith beforehand in an 
uncertified result is the only thing that makes 
the result come true." 

Surely this is certain enough in regard to the 
difference between this present life as a dull and 
dismal struggle for the meat and drink that are 
necessary for an animal existence, and as a 
noble and beautiful conflict for moral and spiri- 
tual ends. It is the faith that makes the result 
come true. As a man thinketh in his heart, so 
is he, and so is his world. For those whose 
thoughts are earthly and sensual, this is a beast’s 
world. For those whose thoughts are high and 
noble and heroic, it is a hero’s world. The 
strength of wishes transforms the very stuff of 
our existence, and moulds it to the form of our 
heart’s inmost desire and hope. 

Why should it not be true in the world to 
come? Why should not the eternal result, as 
well as the present course, of our voyaging de- 
pend upon our own choice of a haven beyond 
the grave ? Christ says that it does. “Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God.” “Lay not up for 
yourselves treasures upon earth, but lay up for 
yourselves treasures in heaven.” 

41 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


If the immortal life is a reality, is it not rea- 
sonable to think that the first condition of our 
attaining it is that we should personally wish 
for it, and strive to enter into it? And must 
not our neglect or refusal to do this be the one 
thing that will inevitably shut us out from it, 
and make our eternity an outer darkness? 

Mark you, I do not say that it is reasonable 
to suppose that we must be absolutely certain 
of the reality of heaven in order to arrive thither. 

We may have many doubts and misgivings. 
But deep down in our hearts there must be the 
wish to prove the truth of this great hope of an 
endless life with God, and the definite resolve 
to make this happy haven the end of all our 
voyaging. 

This is what the apostle means by “the power 
of an endless life.” The passion of immor- 
tality is the thing that immortalizes our being. 
To be in love with heaven is the surest way to 
be fitted for it. Desire is the magnetic force 
of character. Character is the compass of life. 
“He that hath this hope in him purifieth him- 
self.” 

What is your desired haven beyond the grave ? 
It is for you to choose. There are no secret 
books of fate in which your course is traced, 
and your destiny irrevocably appointed. There 
42 


SHIPS AND HAVENS 


is only the Lamb’s book of life, in which new 
names are being written every day, as new hearts 
turn from darkness to light, and from the king- 
dom of Satan to the kingdom of God. No ship 
that sails the sea is as free to make for her port 
as you are to seek the haven that your inmost 
soul desires. And if your choice is right, and 
if your desire is real, so that you will steer and 
strive with God’s help to reach the goal, you 
shall never be wrecked or lost. 

For of every soul that seeks to arrive at use- 
fulness, which is the service of Christ, and at 
holiness, which is the likeness of Christ, and at 
heaven, which is the eternal presence of Christ, 
it is written: So he bringeth them unto their de- 
sired haven . 



43 


II 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

“How much, then, is a man better than a sheep ?” — Matt. 12:12. 

rpO him who first spoke these noble words 
they were an exclamation; for he knew, as 
no one else has ever known, “what was in man.” 
But to us, who repeat them, they often seem 
like a question; for we are so ignorant of what 
is best in ourselves and our fellow-men, we have 
so confused ourselves with artificial views and 
theories, that we find ourselves at the point to 
ask in perplexity. How much, then, is a man 
better than a sheep ? 

It is evident that the answer to this question 
must depend upon the view that we take of 
life. 

Suppose, in the first place, that we take a 
materialistic view of life. We shall then deny 
all evidence except that which we receive 
through our senses. Looking at the world from 
this standpoint, we shall see in it a great mass 
of matter, curiously regulated by laws which 
44 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

have results but no purposes, and agitated into 
various modes of motion by a secret force whose 
origin is, and forever must be, unknown. Life, 
in man as in other animals, is but one form of 
this force. Rising through many subtle grada- 
tions from the first tremor that passes through 
the gastric nerve of a jelly-fish to the most 
delicate vibration of gray matter in the brain 
of a Plato or a Shakespeare, it is really the same 
from the beginning to the end, — physical in 
its birth among the kindred forces of heat and 
electricity, physical in its decay and extinction 
as the causes which sustain it are gradually 
weakened or suddenly cut off. The only differ- 
ence between man and the other animals is a 
difference of degree. The ape takes his place 
in our ancestral tree, and with the sheep we must 
acknowledge at least a cousinship. 

It is true that we have somewhat the ad- 
vantage of these poor relations. We belong 
to a more fortunate branch of the family, and 
have entered upon an inheritance considerably 
enlarged by the extinction of collateral branches. 
But, after all, it is the same inheritance; and 
there is nothing in humanity which is not de- 
rived from, and destined to, earth and ashes 
and dust. 

If, then, you accept this view of life, what 
45 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


answer can you give to the question. How much 
is a man better than a sheep? You must say: 
He is a little better, but not much. In some 
things he has the advantage. He lives longer, 
and has more powers of action and capacities 
of pleasure. He is more clever, and has suc- 
ceeded in making the sheep subject to his domi- 
nation. But the balance is not all on one side. 
The sheep has fewer pains, as well as fewer 
pleasures; less toil, as well as less power. If it 
does not know how to cut a coat, at least it 
succeeds in growing its own natural wool cloth- 
ing, and that without taxation. Above all, the 
sheep is not troubled with any of those vain 
dreams of moral responsibility and future life 
which are the cause of such great and needless 
trouble to humanity. The flocks that fed in 
the pastures of Bethlehem got just as much 
physical happiness out of existence as the shep- 
herd David who watched them; and, being 
natural agnostics, they were free from David’s 
errors in regard to religion. They could give 
all their attention to eating, drinking, and sleep- 
ing, which is the chief end of life. From the 
materialistic standpoint, a man may be a little 
better than a sheep, but not much. 

Or suppose, in the second place, that we take 
the commercial view of life. We shall then say 
46 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 


that all things must be measured by their money 
value, and that it is neither profitable nor neces- 
sary to inquire into their real nature or their 
essential worth. Men and sheep are worth 
what they will bring in the open market; and 
this depends upon the supply and demand. 
Sheep of a very rare breed have been sold for as 
much as five or six thousand dollars. But men 
of common stock, in places where men are plenty 
and cheap (as for example in Central Africa), 
may be purchased for the price of a rusty mus- 
ket or a piece of cotton cloth. According to 
this principle, we must admit that the compara- 
tive value of a man and a sheep is a very un- 
certain matter, and that there are times when 
the dumb animal is much the more valuable of 
the two. 

Of course, you perceive that this view, car- 
ried out to its logical conclusions, means slavery; 
and you call my attention to the fact that slavery 
has been abolished by common consent of the 
civilized world. Yes, thank God, that is true. 
We have done away with the logical conclusion. 
In this land, at least, men and sheep are no 
longer put up at the same block to be disposed 
of to the highest bidder. We have gotten rid 
of the logical conclusion. But have we gotten 
rid entirely of the premise on which it rested? 

47 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


Does not the commercial view of life still pre- 
vail in civilized society ? 

“How much is that man worth?” asks the 
curious inquirer. “That man,” answers the 
animated Commercial Registry and Business 
Directory, “is worth a million dollars; and the 
man sitting next to him is not worth a penny.” 
What other answer can be given by one who 
judges everything by a money standard? If 
wealth is really the measure of value, if the end 
of life is the production or the acquisition of 
riches, then humanity must take its place in the 
sliding scale of commodities. Its value is not 
fixed and certain. It depends upon accidents 
of trade. We must learn to look upon our- 
selves and our fellow-men purely from a busi- 
ness point of view, and to ask only: What can 
this man make ? how much has that man made ? 
how much can I get out of this man’s labour? 
how much will that man pay for my services? 
Those little children that play in the squalid 
city streets, — they are nothing to me or to the 
world; there are too many of them, they are 
worthless. Those long-fleeced, high-bred sheep 
that feed in my pastures, they are among my 
most costly possessions, they will bring an enor- 
mous price, they are immensely valuable. How 
much is a man better than a sheep? What a 
48 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

foolish question ! Sometimes the man is better; 
sometimes the sheep is better. It all depends 
upon the supply and demand. 

Now these two views of life, the materialistic 
and the commercial, always have existed and 
do still exist in the world. Men have held them 
consciously and unconsciously. At this very 
day there are some who profess them; and there 
are many who act upon them, although they 
may not be willing to acknowledge them. They 
have been the parents of countless errors in 
philosophy and sociology; they have bred in- 
numerable vices and shames and cruelties and 
oppressions in the human race. It was to break 
these deadly falsehoods, to sweep them away 
from the mind and heart of humanity, that 
Jesus Christ came into the world. We cannot 
receive his gospel in any sense, we cannot begin 
to understand its meaning and purpose, unless 
we fully, freely, and sincerely accept his great 
revelation of the divine dignity and inestimable 
value of man as man. 

We say this was his revelation. Undoubtedly 
it is true that Christ came to reveal God to 
man. But undoubtedly it is just as true that 
he came to reveal man to himself. He called 
himself the Son of God, but he called himself 
also the Son of Man. His nature was truly 
49 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


divine, but his nature was no less truly human. 
He became man. And what is the meaning of 
that lowly birth in the most helpless form of 
infancy, if it be not to teach us that humanity 
is so related to Deity that it is capable of re- 
ceiving and embodying God himself? He died 
for man. And what is the meaning of that 
sacrifice, if it be not to teach us that God counts 
no price too great to pay for the redemption of 
the human soul? This gospel of our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ contains the most en- 
nobling doctrine of humanity that ever has 
been proclaimed on earth. It is the only cer- 
tain cure for low and debasing views of life. 
It is the only doctrine from which we can learn 
to think of ourselves and our fellow-men as we 
ought to think. Consider for a little while 
the teachings of Jesus Christ in regard to the 
dignity and worth of a man. 

Suppose, then, that we come to him with 
this question: How much is a man better than a 
sheep? He tells us that a man is infinitely 
better, because he is the child of God, because 
he is capable of fellowship with God, and be- 
cause he is made for an immortal life. This 
threefold answer shines out not only in the 
words, but also in the deeds, and above all in 
the death, of the Son of God and the Son of Man. 

50 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

I. Think, first of all, of the dignity of a man, 
as the offspring and the likeness of God. This 
was not a new doctrine first proclaimed by 
Christ. It is clearly taught in the magnificent 
imagery of the Book of Genesis. The chief 
design of that great picture of the beginnings is 
to show that a Personal Creator is the source 
and author of all things that are made. But 
next to that, and almost, perhaps altogether, 
of equal importance, is the design to show that 
man is superior to all the other works of God, — 
that the distance between him and the lower 
animals is not a difference in degree, but a differ- 
ence in kind; yes, the difference is so great that 
we must use a new word to describe the origin 
of humanity, and if we speak of the stars and 
the earth, the trees and the flowers, the fishes, 
the birds and the beasts, as the works of God, 
when man appears we must find a nobler name 
and say, This is more than God’s work, it is 
God’s child. 

Our human consciousness confirms this testi- 
mony and answers to it. We know that there 
is something in us which raises us above the 
things that we see and hear and touch, and the 
creatures that appear at least to spend their 
brief life in the automatic workings of sense and 
instinct. These powers of reason and affection 
51 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and conscience, and above all this wonderful 
power of free will, the faculty of swift, sovereign, 
voluntary choice, belong to a higher being. We 
say not to corruption. Thou art my father, nor 
to the worm. Thou art my mother; but to God, 
Thou art my father, and to the Great Spirit, 
In thee was my life born. Frail and mortal as 
our physical existence may be, in some respects 
the most frail, the most defenseless among ani- 
mals, we are yet conscious of something that 
lifts us up and makes us supreme. “Man,” 
says Pascal, “is but a reed, the feeblest thing in 
nature; but he is a reed that thinks. It needs 
not that the universe arm itself to crush him. 
An exhalation, a drop of water, suffice to destroy 
him. But were the universe to crush him, man 
is yet nobler than the universe, for he knows 
that he dies, and the universe, even in prevail- 
ing against him, knows not its power.” 

Now the beauty and strength of Christ’s 
doctrine of man lie not in the fact that he was 
at pains to explain and defend and justify this 
view of human nature, but in the fact that he 
assumed it with an unshaken conviction of its 
truth, and acted upon it always and everywhere. 
He spoke to man, not as the product of Nature, 
but as the child of God. He took it for granted 
that we are different from plants and animals, 
52 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

and that we are conscious of the difference. 
“Consider the lilies,” he says to us, “the lilies 
cannot consider themselves: they know not 
what they are, nor what their life means; but 
you know, and you can draw the lesson of their 
lower beauty into your higher life. Regard the 
birds of the air: they are dumb and unconscious 
dependents upon the Divine bounty, but you 
are conscious objects of the Divine care; are 
you not of more value than many sparrows?” 
Through all his words we feel the thrilling power 
of this high doctrine of humanity. He is al- 
ways appealing to reason, to conscience, to the 
power of choice between good and evil, to the 
noble and godlike faculties in man. 

And now think for a moment of the fact that 
his life was voluntarily, and of set purpose, 
spent among the poorest and humblest of man- 
kind. Remember that he spoke not to philoso- 
phers and scholars, but to peasants and fisher- 
men and the little children of the world. What 
did he mean by that? Surely it was to teach 
us that this doctrine of the dignity of human 
nature applies to man as man. It is not based 
upon considerations of wealth or learning or 
culture or eloquence. Those are the things of 
which the world takes account, and without 
which it refuses to pay any attention to us. A 
53 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


mere man, in the eyes of the world, is a nobody. 
But Christ comes to humanity in its poverty, 
in its ignorance, stripped of all outward attri- 
butes and signs of power, destitute of all save 
that which belongs in common to mankind, — to 
this lowly child, this very beggar-maid of human 
nature, comes the King, and speaks to her as a 
princess in disguise, and sets a crown upon her 
head. 

II. Christ reveals to us another and a still 
higher ground of the dignity of man by speaking 
to us as beings who are capable of holding com- 
munion with God, and reflecting the divine 
holiness in our hearts and lives. And here also 
his doctrine gains clearness and force when we 
bring it into close connection with his conduct. 
I suppose that there are few of us who would 
not be ready to admit at once that there are 
some men and women who have high spiritual 
capacities. For them, we say, religion is a possi- 
ble thing. They can attain to the knowledge of 
God and fellowship with him. They can pray, 
and sing praises, and do holy work. It is easy 
for them to be good. They are born good. 
They are saints by nature. But for the great 
mass of the human race, this is out of the ques- 
tion, absurd, impossible. They must dwell in 
ignorance, in wickedness, in impiety. 

54 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

But to all this Christ says, No ! No, to our 
theory of perfection for the few. No, to our 
theory of hopeless degradation for the many. 
He takes his way straight to the outcasts of 
the world, the publicans and the harlots and 
sinners; and to them he speaks of the mercy 
and the love of God and the beauty of the 
heavenly life: not to cast them into despair; 
not because it was impossible for them to be 
good and to find God, but because it was divinely 
possible, — because God was waiting for them, 
and because something in them was waiting 
for God. They were lost, — but surely they 
never could have been lost unless they had first 
of all belonged to God; and this makes it possi- 
ble for them to be found again. They were 
prodigals, — but surely the prodigal is also a 
child, and there is a place for him in the father’s 
house. He may dwell among the swine, but he 
is not one of them; he is capable of remembering 
his father’s love, he is capable of answering his 
father’s embrace, he is capable of dwelling in 
his father’s house in filial love and obedience. 

That is the doctrine of Christ in regard to 
fallen and disordered and guilty human nature. 
It is fallen, it is disordered, it is guilty; but the 
capacity of reconciliation, of holiness, of love to 
God, still dwells in it, and may be quickened 
55 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


into a new life. That is God’s work, but God 
himself could not do it if man were not capable 
of it. 

Do you remember the story of the portrait 
of Dante which is painted upon the walls of 
the Bargello, at Florence? For many years it 
was supposed that the picture had utterly per- 
ished. Men had heard of it, but no one living 
had ever seen it. But presently came an artist 
who was determined to find it again. He went 
into the place where tradition said that it had 
been painted. The room was used as a store- 
house for lumber and straw. The walls were 
covered with dirty whitewash. He had the 
heaps of rubbish carried away. Patiently and 
carefully he removed the whitewash from the 
wall. Lines and colours long hidden began to 
appear. And at last the grave, lofty, noble 
face of the great poet looked out again upon the 
world of light. 

“That was wonderful,” you say, “that was 
beautiful !” Not half so wonderful as the work 
which Christ came to do in the heart of man, — 
to restore the likeness of God and bring the 
divine image to the light. He comes to us with 
the knowledge that God’s image is there, though 
concealed. He touches us with the faith that 
the likeness can be restored. To have upon 
56 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 


our hearts the impress of the divine nature, to 
know that there is no human being in whom that 
treasure is not hidden, and from whose stained 
and dusty soul Christ cannot bring out that 
reflection of God’s face, — that, indeed, is to feel 
the dignity and value of humanity, and to know 
that a man is better than a sheep ! 

III. There is yet one more element in 
Christ’s teaching in regard to the dignity and 
value of man; and that is his doctrine of im- 
mortality. This truth springs inevitably out 
of his teaching in regard to the origin and ca- 
pacity of human nature. A being formed in 
the divine image, a being capable of reflecting 
the divine holiness, is a being so lofty that he 
must have also the capacity of entering into a 
life which is not dependent upon the nourish- 
ment of meat and drink, and in which the 
spiritual powers shall be delivered from the 
bondage of sense and the fear of death, so that 
they may be unfolded to perfection. All that 
Christ teaches about man, all that Christ offers 
to do for man, links him to a vast and boundless 
future. 

This idea of immortality runs through every- 
thing that Jesus says and does. Never for a 
moment does he speak to man as a creature 
of this present world. Never for a moment 
57 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


does he forget, or suffer us to forget, that our 
largest and most precious interests lie in the 
world to come. He would arouse our souls to 
perceive and contemplate the immense issues of 
life. The perils that beset us here through sin 
are not brief and momentary dangers, possi- 
bilities of disgrace in the eyes of men, of suffer- 
ing such limited pain as our bodies can endure 
in the disintegrating process of disease, of dying 
a temporal death, which at the worst can only 
cause us a few hours of anguish. A man might 
bear these things, and take the risk of this 
world’s shame and sickness and death, for the 
sake of some darling sin. But the truth that 
flashes on us from the word of Christ, is that 
the consequence of sin is the peril of losing an 
immortal spirit. 

On the other hand, the opportunities that 
come to us here, through the grace of God, are 
not merely opportunities of temporal peace and 
happiness, they are chances of securing endless 
and immeasurable felicity, wealth that can never 
be counted or lost, peace that the world can 
neither give nor take away. We must under- 
stand that now the kingdom of God has come 
near unto us. It is a time when the doors of 
heaven are open. We may gain an inheritance 
incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
58 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

away. We may lay hold, not only on a present 
joy of holiness, but on an everlasting life with 
God. 

It is thus that Christ looks upon the chil- 
dren of men, not as herds of dumb driven cattle, 
but as living souls moving onward to eternity. 
It is thus that he dies for men, not to deliver 
them from brief sorrows, but to save them 
from final loss, and to bring them into bliss 
that knows no end. It is thus that he speaks 
to us, in solemn words before which our dreams 
of earthly pleasure and power and fame and 
wealth are dissipated like unsubstantial vapours: 
“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man 
give in exchange for his soul?” 

There never was a time in which Christ’s doc- 
trine of the dignity and value of a man as man 
was more needed than it is to-day. There is no 
truth more important and necessary for us to 
take into our hearts, and hold fast, and carry 
out in our lives. For here we stand in an age 
when the very throng and pressure and super- 
fluity of human life lead us to set a low estimate 
upon its value. The air we breathe is heavy 
with materialism and commercialism. The low- 
est and most debasing views of human nature 
59 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


are freely proclaimed and unconsciously ac- 
cepted. There is no escape, no safety for us, 
save in coming back to Christ, and learning 
from him that man is the child of God, made in 
the divine image, capable of the divine fellow- 
ship, and of an immortal life. There are three 
practical reasons why we need to learn this. 

We need to learn it in order to understand 
the real meaning, and guilt, and danger, and 
hatefulness of sin. Men are telling us, nowa- 
days, that there is no such thing as sin. It is 
a dream, a delusion. It must be left out of 
account. All the evils in the world are natural 
and inevitable. They are simply the secre- 
tions of human nature. There is no more shame 
or guilt connected with them than with the ma- 
laria of the swamp, or the poison of the night- 
shade. 

But Christ tells us that sin is real, and that it 
is the enemy, the curse, the destroyer of man- 
kind. It is not a part of man as God made him; 
it is a part of man as he has unmade and de- 
graded himself. It is the marring of the divine 
image, the ruin of the glorious temple, the self- 
mutilation and suicide of the immortal soul. 
It is sin that casts man down into the mire. It 
is sin that drags him from the fellowship of 
God into the company of beasts. It is sin that 
60 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 

leads him into the far country of famine, and 
leaves him among the swine, and makes him fain 
to fill his belly with the husks that the swine 
do eat. Therefore we must hate sin, and fear 
it, and abhor it, always and everywhere. When 
we look into our own hearts and find sin there, 
we must humble ourselves before God, and re- 
pent. Every sin that nestles within us is a 
part of the world’s shame and misery. Every 
selfish desire that stirs within our souls is a part 
of that which has stirred up strife, and cruelty, 
and murder, and horrible torture, and bloody 
war among the children of men. Every lust- 
ful thought that defiles our imagination is a 
part of that which has begotten loathsome 
vices and crawling shames throughout the 
world. God hates sin because it ruins man. 
And when we know what that means, when we 
feel that same poison of evil within us, we must 
hate sin as he does, and bow in penitence before 
him, crying, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” 

We need to learn Christ’s doctrine of the 
dignity and value of humanity in order to help 
us to love our fellow-men. This is a thing easy 
to profess, but hard, bitterly hard, to do. The 
faults and follies of human nature are so appar- 
ent, the unlovely and contemptible and offensive 
qualities of many people thrust themselves so 
61 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

sharply upon our notice and repel us so con- 
stantly, that we are tempted to shrink back 
wounded and disappointed, and to relapse into 
a life that is governed by its disgusts. If we 
dwell in the atmosphere of a Christless world, 
if we read only those newspapers which chroni- 
cle the crimes and meannesses of men, or those 
realistic novels which deal with the secret vices 
and corruptions of humanity, and fill our souls 
with the unspoken conviction that virtue is an 
old-fashioned dream, and that there is no man 
good, no woman pure, I do not see how we can 
help despising and hating mankind. Who shall 
deliver us from this spirit of bitterness? Who 
shall take us by the hand and lead us out of 
this heavy, fetid air of the lazar-house and the 
morgue ? None but Christ. If we will go with 
him, he will teach us not to hate our fellow-men 
for what they are, but to love them for what 
they may become. He will teach us to look not 
for the evil which is manifest, but for the good 
which is hidden. He will teach us not to de- 
spair, but to hope, even for the most degraded 
of mankind. And so, perchance, as we keep 
company with him, we shall learn the secret of 
that divine charity which fills the heart with 
peace, and joy, and quiet strength. We shall 
learn to do good unto all men as we have oppor- 
62 


THE WORTH OF A MAN 


tunity, not for the sake of gratitude or reward, 
but because they are the children of our Father, 
and the brethren of our Saviour. We shall 
learn the meaning of that blessed death on Cal- 
vary, and be willing to give ourselves as a sacri- 
fice for others, knowing that he that turneth 
a sinner from the error of his ways shall save a 
soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. 

Finally, we need to accept and believe Christ’s 
doctrine of the dignity and vajue of humanity 
in order that it may lead us personally to God 
and a higher life. You are infinitely better and 
more precious than the dumb beasts. You 
know it, you feel it, you are conscious that you 
belong to another world. And yet it may be 
that there are some of you who forget it, and 
live as if there were no God, no soul, no future 
life. Your ambitions are fixed upon the wealth 
that corrodes, the fame that fades; your desires 
are towards the pleasures that pall upon the 
senses; you are bartering immortal treasure for 
the things which perish in the using. The time 
is coming when you must lie down like the dumb 
beast and crumble into dust. Nay, not like the 
beast, for to you shall come in that hour the 
still, small voice saying, “This night shall thy 
soul be required of thee.” 

Thy soul, — why not think of it now? The 
63 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


image of God is impressed upon it. The one 
thing needful for you is to know, and love, and 
serve him who is the father of your spirit. 

Come then to Christ, who can save you from 
the sin which defiles and destroys your man- 
hood. Come then to Christ, who can make you 
good men and true, living in the power of an 
endless life. Come then to Christ, that you 
may have fellowship on earth with the Son of 
Man, and dwell with the Son of God forever, 
and behold his glory. 


64 


Ill 

FAITH 

“Without faith it is impossible to please him.” — Heb. 11:6. 

rpHIS is a short statement of a large truth. 

The plain language lends force and dignity 
to the thought. It needs no embroidered words, 
no jewelry of speech, to set it off. For truth, 
like beauty, shows best with least adornment. 

In trying to unfold the meaning of this text 
I would fain keep to that simplicity and clear- 
ness of which it gives us such a good model. 
There is no reason why religion should be made 
dark and difficult by talking about it in long, 
unfamiliar, antiquated words which cause people 
to wish for a dictionary; nor is there any excuse 
for seeking to win the wonder and astonishment 
of men by obscure sayings and curious compari- 
sons, — mountains of eloquence which labour 
long and violently to produce a little mouse of 
practical sense. In ancient times the teachers 
of the people were told to read in the book of 
the Law of God distinctly, and give the sense, 
65 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and cause the people to understand the meaning. 
To reach that result no pains are too great, no 
effort is too costly. I would rather spend five 
days in trying to make a text clear and level to 
the mind, to open the door of it so that any one 
could walk in, than five minutes in trying to 
make it strange and mysterious, to cover it with 
all kinds of ornaments and arabesques so that 
nobody should be able to find the keyhole and 
unlock the door. 

Religion is full of mysteries. The object of 
the Bible is not to increase them, but to remove 
them. If a certain amount of mystery still re- 
mains, it lies in the subject, and not in the way 
in which it is treated. For the most part, the 
teachings and rules of the Scriptures are so 
clear and direct that the wayfaring man, though 
a fool, need not err therein; they shed light and 
not darkness; they disperse the clouds to reveal 
the sun. 

Take the declaration of the text: “Without 
faith it is impossible to please God.” How easy 
it is to see just why the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews inserted that sentence where it 
stands! He is writing about the heroes of 
faith, — the men and women who, from the very 
beginning of the world, have been bound to- 
gether into one company by this great principle 
66 


FAITH 


of all true and noble life. Among them he 
counts the patriarch Enoch. But as we look 
back to the brief record of Enoch’s life in the 
Book of Genesis, we find that not a word is said 
there about his faith. By what right, then, is 
he included in the list? Why is he counted 
among the faithful? “I will tell you why,” 
says the writer of the Epistle: “it is because he 
obtained this testimony, that he pleased God. 
This is proof positive that he must have had 
faith. Where you find a flower, you know there 
must have been a seed. Where you find a 
river, you know there must be a spring. Where 
you see a flame, you know there must be a fire. 
Where you find a man beloved and blessed of 
God, you know there must be faith. Whether 
it is recorded or not, whether you can see it or 
not, it must be there, germ of his virtue, foun- 
tain-head of his goodness, living source of 
warmth and light; for without faith it is im- 
possible to please God.” 

How simple and how beautiful is that phrase, 
— to please God. What a sense of nearness to 
the Divine Being it gives us. How it discloses 
God’s nature and character. What a noble 
statement of the true aim of life. 

God can be pleased, then. He is not a cold 
abstraction, an immovable substance, a dull, 
67 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


unimpassioned, silent, joyless, mighty force. 
He is a person, capable of affections and emo- 
tions. He is a heart that feels. Delight is no 
stranger to him. His love is no vague, blind 
impulse, flowing dumbly towards all things alike. 
It is a seeking, choosing love; and when it finds 
the object of its search, a thrill of gladness 
passes through it, larger, purer than we can 
understand, and yet like that which comes to 
us when we see the fairest and the best. He 
approves and blesses. His Spirit is filled with 
the music of pleasure. 

To waken that music, to win that approval, 
to please God, — surely that is the highest and 
holiest object for a human life. 

To please men is a natural impulse. There is 
no one who does not desire in some degree to 
obtain the liking and favour of his fellow-crea- 
tures. But presently, as we come to know by 
experience how shallow and how fickle are the 
fashions of the world, how false and often how 
impure are the motives by which the liking of 
the crowd is influenced, how easily it is gained 
by accident and lost by chance, we begin to see 
that this kind of surface favour is deceitful, 
and to look for something better. 

To please good men, — that is a nobler ambi- 
tion. To win the confidence and honour of 
68 


FAITH 


those who are honest and earnest and upright; 
to speak some word, to do some deed, to exer- 
cise some virtue, of which those who think deep 
thoughts, and lead pure lives, and perform noble 
actions, shall say, “That was right, that was 
true, that was kind, that was brave,” — this is a 
motive which has always been potent in the 
most generous breasts, restraining them from 
evil, nerving them to heroic efforts, stimulating 
them to dare and to do. 

But there is a motive deeper and more intense 
than even this: it is the desire to please that 
one among our fellow-creatures whom we have 
chosen, it may be, as the most loyal heart and 
true; to pluck some flower from the lofty crags 
of duty; to win some honourable trophy in the 
world’s great battlefield, — yes , even though that 
trophy be but the scar received in warring for 
the right, the banner which has been torn and 
stained in an unequal conflict, but never dis- 
honoured; to do something, to endure something, 
which shall really please the one who is to us 
the best and dearest on earth, — how many a 
soul has been quickened, and uplifted, and 
strengthened to face danger, disgrace, and death 
by that profound desire ! 

But to please God, the perfect, radiant Being, 
the most wise, the most holy, the most beauti- 
69 


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ful, the most loving of all Spirits; to perform 
some task, achieve some victory, bring some 
offering that shall be acceptable to him, and in 
which he shall delight; simply to live our life, 
whatever it may be, so that he, the good and 
glorious God, shall approve and bless it, and 
say of it, “Well done,” and welcome it into his 
own joy, — that is a divine ambition. 

“ What vaster dream could hit the mood 
Of love on earth?” 

It has sustained martyrs at the stake, and 
comforted prisoners in the dungeon, and cheered 
warriors in the heat of perilous conflict, and 
inspired labourers in every noble cause, and 
made thousands of obscure and nameless heroes 
in every hidden place of earth. It is the pillar 
of light which shines before the journeying host. 
It is the secret watchword of the army, given 
not to the leaders alone, but flashing like fire 
through all the ranks. When that thought 
descends upon us, it kindles our hearts and 
makes them live. What though we miss the 
applause of men; what though friends misunder- 
stand, and foes defame, and the great world pass 
us by? There is One that seeth in secret, and 
followeth the soul in its toils and struggles, — the 
great King, whose approval is honour, whose 
70 


FAITH 

love is happiness; to please him is success, and 
victory, and peace. 

There are a million ways of pleasing him, as 
many as the characters of men, as many as the 
hues and shades of virtue, as many as the con- 
flicts between good and evil, as many as the 
calls to honest labour, as many as the oppor- 
tunities of doing right and being good. That 
is the broad meaning of this eleventh chapter 
of the Hebrews, with its long roll of different 
achievements, with its list of men and women of 
every age, of every quality and condition, slaves 
and freemen, leaders and followers, warriors and 
statesmen, saints and sinners, and silent mar- 
tyrs, and nameless conquerors; there are a 
million ways of pleasing God, but not one with- 
out faith. Numberless forms of energy, but 
none without heat. Myriad colours of beauty, 
but none without light. All is cold and black 
until the sun shines. A universe of possibili- 
ties of goodness spreads before us, but not one 
of them can be realised unless we have faith. 
For without faith it is impossible to please God. 

But why should this be so ? Is it an arbitrary 
requirement which the Divine Being makes of 
his creatures, or is there a deep reason for it in 
the nature of men and the conditions of human 
life? I do not believe that God is ever arbi- 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


trary. He is indeed omnipotent, and he has the 
power to demand of us whatsoever he will. But 
there is always a wise and holy reason in his 
demands. Sometimes we cannot understand it; 
it lies too deep for us. But sometimes we can 
understand it; it lies within our reach. And in 
the present case I think we can easily see just 
why faith is necessary to the success of every 
effort to please him. 

Faith is not a strange and far-away thing. 
It is a principle of common life. We exercise 
it every day. It is simply the confidence in 
something which is invisible; as the Apostle 
says, “it is the substance of things hoped for, 
the evidence of things not seen.” Every time 
you receive the testimony of your fellow-men, 
every time you trust in the qualities of their 
character which are beyond the reach of your 
vision, every time you rely upon a law of logic 
in an argument, upon a law of nature in your 
action, upon a law of morality in your conduct, 
you exercise faith. It is the condition of rea- 
son, of activity, of human society. “All polities 
and societies,” says a wise observer, “have come 
into existence through the trust of men in each 
other,” and, we may add, through their trust 
in unseen principles of equity, and in future 
results of prudence, and in One higher than them- 
72 


FAITH 


selves whom they could neither see nor name. 
Take away confidence in the invisible, and the 
whole fabric decays, crumbles, and falls in ruin. 

Thus, even from the human point of view, 
faith is necessary. But from the Divine point 
of view, it must appear infinitely more essential. 

Man is made to know as much as possible, to 
do as much as possible, and to be as good as 
possible. In the sphere of knowledge, in the 
sphere of action, in the sphere of character, 
faith is the one element that gives life and power 
to please God. 

I. Look first at the sphere of knowledge, 
the understanding of the world and of life. We 
stand in a strange and mysterious universe, with 
certain faculties to help us to a comprehension 
of it. First, we have the senses, and they tell 
us how things look, and taste, and sound, and 
feel. Then we have the reasoning powers, and 
they enable us to discover how things are re- 
lated to each other, how causes are followed by 
effects, how great laws control their action and 
reaction. But is there not something beyond 
this, a depth below the deep and a height be- 
yond the height? Every instinct of our nature 
assures us that there must be. The lesson of 
modern thought is the limitation of science 
and philosophy. But outside of this narrow 
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circle lie the truths that we most desire and need 
to know. In that unexplored world dwells God. 
Why should we hesitate to confess that we must 
have another and a higher faculty of knowledge ? 
The astronomer has keen eyes, but he knows 
their limitation, and he does no discredit to 
them when he uses the telescope to bring near 
the unseen stars. The entomologist has quick 
sight, but he does not disparage it when he turns 
to the microscope to search a drop of water for 
its strange, numberless forms of life. Reason 
is excellent and forceful, but beyond its bound- 
aries there is a realm which can only be discerned 
by faith. Where science ends, where philoso- 
phy pauses, faith begins. 

“By faith we understand that the worlds have 
been framed by the word of God, so that what is 
seen hath not been made out of things which do 
appear.” 

Mark the words: By faith we understand. 
It is a principle of comprehension, then, not 
of confusion; something which clarifies and en- 
larges the vision. It discloses not only the ori- 
gin but also the purpose and the meaning of 
things. It is not the contradiction, but the 
crown and complement of reason. How can 
God be pleased with any knowledge from which 
this element is left out ? 

74 


FAITH 


Suppose that you had written a book, and 
some one should take it up and measure it, 
and say: “This curious object is composed of 
cloth, paper, ink, glue, and thread. It is seven 
inches long, five inches wide, and two inches 
thick; it contains five hundred pages and a 
hundred thousand words, and I wonder where it 
came from and what it is for.” Would that 
please you ? 

Suppose that you had carved a statue, and 
some one should find it and say: “This remarka- 
ble stone is composed of carbonate of lime; it is 
very smooth and white, and it weighs about six 
hundred pounds, and I think I have explained 
it perfectly.” Would that satisfy you ? Would 
you not be better pleased with the child, or the 
ignorant peasant, who stood and looked at your 
statue and felt its beauty, and recognized that 
it had been made by some one to represent a 
great and beautiful idea? 

The world was made for its meaning, to show 
forth the wisdom, power, and goodness of God. 
If we do not see that, we see nothing. We may 
be able to tell how many stars are in the Milky 
Way; we may be able to count the petals of 
every flower, and number the bones of every 
bird; but unless faith leads us to a deeper under- 
standing, a more reverent comprehension of the 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


significance of the universe, God can no more be 
pleased with our knowledge than the painter is 
pleased with the fly which touches his picture 
with its feelers, and sips the varnish from the 
surface, and dies without dreaming of the mean- 
ing, thought, feeling, embodied in the colours. 
But on the simplest soul that feels the wonder 
and the hidden glory of the universe, on the 
child to whom the stars are little windows into 
heaven, or the poet to whom 

“ the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears ” 

God looks down with pleasure and approval. 
For in such a soul he sees the beginning of faith, 
which is able to pass behind the appearance to 
the reality, and make its possessor wise unto 
everlasting life. 

II. Turn now to the sphere of action. Here 
faith is no less necessary. There are some who 
would persuade us that believing is appropriate 
only to infancy and old age; that it is a kind 
of dreaming, an infirmity of the weak and vision- 
ary. But the truth is otherwise. Carlyle says: 
“Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a 
nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, 
so soon as it believes. A man lives by believing 
something, not by debating and arguing about 
76 


FAITH 


many things.” Faith is power. It makes men 
strong, ardent, persistent, heroic. Nothing truly 
great has ever been done in any department of 
the world’s work without faith. Think of the 
faith of our explorers and discoverers, — Colum- 
bus, who found the New World; the Pilgrim 
Fathers, who planted it with life; Livingstone, 
who opened a new continent to civilization. 
Think of the faith of our men of science, — 
Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Henry. 
Think of the faith of the reformers, — Wyclif, 
Luther, Knox. Think of the faith of the mar- 
tyrs, — Polycarp, Huss, Savonarola, the Cove- 
nanters of Scotland, the Huguenots of France. 
Faith is a force, and those who grasp it lay hold 
of something which is able to make them 
mightier than themselves. 

Let a man fasten himself to some great idea, 
some large truth, some noble cause, even in the 
affairs of this world, and it will send him for- 
ward with energy, with steadfastness, with 
confidence. This is what Emerson meant when 
he said, “Hitch your wagon to a star.” These 
are the potent, the commanding, the enduring, 
the inspiring men, — in our own history, men 
like Washington and Lincoln. They may fall, 
they may be defeated, they may perish; but 
onward moves the cause, and their souls go 
77 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


with it, for they are part of it, they have be- 
lieved in it. 

And if the cause be divine, if the idea come 
from above, if the action be impelled by faith 
in God and a resolve to do his will, then how 
dauntless and impregnable does it make the 
heart in which it dwells ! Paul standing alone 
against the mocking, sneering world to testify 
to the truth as it is in Jesus, “I believe and 
therefore speak:” Luther riding into the city 
of Worms, though every housetop were thronged 
with devils, and appearing alone before the 
imperial council, “Here stand I, I cannot do 
otherwise, God help me:” Morrison, the first 
missionary to China, standing alone on the deck 
of the ship that bears him to a strange and hos- 
tile world: “Do you think,” says the captain, 
“that you will make an impression upon 400,- 
000,000 Chinese?” “No, sir,” is the reply, 
“but I believe that God will:” — that is faith, — 
everywhere and always the victory that over- 
cometh the world. 

Sometimes it seems to me as if there were 
only one great and essential difference among 
the multitudes of people who inhabit this earth. 
Moving about among them, coming into con- 
tact with them, I find that some men and women 
seem unreal, hollow, visionary, masks without 
78 


FAITH 


faces, costumes without character. They run 
in the grooves of custom, they drift to and fro 
on the currents of fashion, they are blown up 
and down by the winds of popular opinion; 
even when they seem to lead, it is only as the 
lightest leaf is carried along foremost by the 
wind. They are only animated shadows, with- 
out principle or probity, without conviction or 
consistency, without faith or fidelity. But 
other men and women seem real, and true, and 
genuine. There is something behind their looks, 
their words, their actions. They have power to 
touch, and move, and satisfy the heart, because 
they believe. Have you never felt the differ- 
ence ? Do you think that God does not feel it ? 
Can a mask, a shadow, however fair or orderly, 
please him ? Will he withhold his approval and 
blessing from any real, honest, struggling, be- 
lieving soul? 

But perhaps some may be thinking just now: 
“This is the old story that the preacher is tell- 
ing us; he is singing the same old song about 
faith, — and still faith, — and always the necessity 
of faith ! Why not lay more emphasis on works ? 
Surely they are more important. He has just 
told us that there are many ways of pleasing 
God. There are many courses of good conduct 
open to us all. If we follow any one of them, 
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that is enough. So long as a man’s actions are 
right it makes no difference what lies behind 
them, it makes no difference whether he believes 
or not.” Do you really think so? Is there no 
difference between a body without a spirit and 
a body with a spirit? Does not the thought, 
the motive, the purpose count for something ? 

Here are a multitude of people giving their 
money to support the Temple. And many rich 
men, standing beside the treasury, cast in their 
gifts; from habit, from a desire to appear well 
before the world, from a hope of reward. A poor 
widow comes with her two mites; she knows her 
gift will be despised, she fears it may be laughed 
at, but she believes that God wants her to do 
what she can, and that he will not refuse her 
offering. So her coppers fall in among the gold 
and the silver, and the Lord of the treasury 
blesses her, and says, “She hath given more 
than they all.” 

Here are two women going down to work 
among the sick and the poor. One goes be- 
cause there is a fashion of it, because she would 
fain have the credit which belongs to the lady 
bountiful. She moves among them like an ice- 
berg, and they hate her. She brings a chill 
with her which all her coals and blankets can 
never warm away. The other goes because she 
80 


FAITH 


believes in it, believes that God wants her to do 
it, believes that the sorrowful and the distressed 
are Christ’s brethren, and that she is bound to 
them, and that they have immortal souls which 
she may win for him. She moves among them 
like a sister of Jesus and a friend of God; and 
of her the Master says, “ Inasmuch as she hath 
done it unto one of the least of these my breth- 
ren, she hath done it unto me.” 

Here are two men praying. One stands upon 
the corner of the street, correct, punctilious; at 
the appointed time he lifts his hands, he raises 
his voice that he may be heard of men. The 
other kneels in the dust, ignorant, stammering, 
feeble; he lifts his face to Christ and says, 
“Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.” 
And that broken, stammering cry of honest 
faith pleases God, and brings the blessing which 
would never come to the Pharisee though he 
stood on the street corner till the crack of doom. 

Let us never be so foolish as to think that it 
makes no difference whether we believe or not. 
Faith is the soul of conduct; faith is the bloom, 
the breath, the vital power of religion; without 
it, virtue is the alabaster box, empty; faith is 
the precious ointment whose fragrance fills the 
house. Therefore without faith it is impossible 
to please God. 


81 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

III. Finally, faith is necessary because it is 
the only possible way of contact between God 
and man, the only way in which he can draw 
near to us, and save and bless us. And that, if 
you will believe it, is the one thing that he most 
desires to do. There is no compulsion laid upon 
him. He does not act as one who is performing 
an indifferent task. He is so good that he longs 
to deliver us from sin and death, to bring us to 
himself, to give us a place in his happy kingdom. 
This is his glory and his delight: to rescue the 
perishing, to raise the fallen, to forgive the sin- 
ful, to give life to the dying. He loves this 
work so much that he sent his own dear Son into 
the world to accomplish it. And nothing that 
you can do will please him so much as simply 
to let him save you, and help you to be good. 

Think for a moment: what can you do for any 
one who does not trust you, who does not be- 
lieve in you? Nothing. That barrier of mis- 
trust stands like a wall of ice between you and 
the soul that you desire to help. Is there any- 
thing that wounds you more than to be doubted 
and denied, and thrust away in suspicion or 
indifference? Truly that is the deepest and 
most bitter pain. Is there anything that pleases 
you more than to be trusted, — to have even a 
little child look up into your face, and put out 
82 


FAITH 


its hand to meet yours, and come to you con- 
fidingly ? By so much as God is better than you 
are, by so much more does he love to be trusted. 

Yes, I know you are trying to be good, — 
fitfully, imperfectly, yet still trying. But there 
is something else that God would have you do 
first. He would have you believe that he wants 
you to be good, that he is willing to help you to 
be good, that he has sent his Son to make you 
good. 

There is a hand stretched out to you, — a 
hand with a wound in the palm of it. Reach 
out the hand of your faith to clasp it, and cling 
to it, for without faith it is impossible to please 
God. 




83 




IV 


COURAGE 

“ Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine 
heart .” — Psalm 28 : 14. 

C OURAGE is one of the simplest and most 
straightforward of the virtues; necessary, 
and therefore possible, for every true and noble 
human life. 

It is a quality that we admire by instinct. 
We need no teacher to tell us that it is a fine 
thing to be brave. The lack of courage is uni- 
versally recognized as a grave defect. If in our 
own hearts we feel the want of it, if we cannot 
find enough of it to enable us to face the dangers 
and meet the responsibilities and fight the bat- 
tles of life, we are not only sorry, but secretly 
ashamed. The absence of courage is a fault 
that few are willing to confess. We naturally 
conceal it, and cover it up, and try to keep it 
secret even from ourselves. We invent favour- 
able names for it, which are only unconscious 
excuses. We call it prudence, or respectability, 
or conservatism, or economy, or worldly wisdom, 
84 


COURAGE 


or the instinct of self-preservation. For in 
truth there is nothing that we are more reluctant 
to admit than cowardice; and there is no virtue 
which we would more gladly possess and prove 
than courage. 

In the first place, it is an honourable virtue. 
Men have always loved and praised it. It 
lends a glory and a splendour to the life in which 
it dwells, — lifts it up and ennobles it, and crowns 
it with light. The world delights in heroism, 
even in its rudest forms and lowest manifesta- 
tions. Among the animals we create a sort of 
aristocracy on the basis of courage, and recog- 
nize, in the fearlessness of the game beasts and 
birds and fishes, a claim to rank above the timor- 
ous, furtive, spiritless members of creation. 

And in man bravery is always fine. We sa- 
lute it in our enemies. A daring foe is respected, 
and though we must fight against him we can 
still honour his courage, and almost forget the 
conflict in our admiration for his noble bearing. 
That is what Dr. Johnson meant by saying, “I 
love a good hater.” The enemy who slinks and 
plots and conceals — makes traps and ambus- 
cades, seeks to lead his opponent into dangers 
which he himself would never dare to face — is 
despicable, serpentine, and contemptible. But 
he who stands up boldly against his antagonist 
85 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


in any conflict, physical, social, or spiritual, and 
deals fair blows, and uses honest arguments 
and faces the issues of warfare, is a man to love 
even across the chasm of strife. An outspoken 
infidel is nobler than a disguised skeptic. A 
brave, frank, manly foe is better than a false, 
weak, timorous friend. 

The literature of courage has always been im- 
mensely popular, and the history of the brave is 
written in letters of gold. It is this that men 
have loved to read in the strange, confused an- 
nals of war, — deeds of self-forgetful daring which 
leap from the smoke and clamour of battle, and 
shine in the sudden making of splendid names. 
It is the quality which levels youth with age, 
gives to woman the force of manhood, equalizes 
the peasant with the noble, and consumes all 
outward distinctions in the flame of glory. The 
brave Lady Douglas thrusting her tender arm 
through the staple of the door to defend her 
king from the assassin; Leonidas at Thermopylae, 
and Horatius at the bridge, and the Six Hundred 
at Balaklava; old Cranmer bathing his hands in 
fire at the martyr’s stake, and young Stephen 
praying fearlessly for his murderers; Florence 
Nightingale facing fever in Crimean hospitals; 
Father Damien braving leprosy in the Islands of 
the Sea; young men and maidens, old men and 
86 


COURAGE 


matrons, fighting, suffering, achieving, resisting, 
enduring, daring, living, and dying — it is the 
spark of heroism that kindles their names into 
the blaze of light, for everywhere and always 
courage is an honourable virtue. 

In the second place, courage is a serviceable 
virtue. There is hardly any place in which it 
is not useful. There is no type of character, no 
sphere of action, in which there is not room and 
need for it. 

Genius is talent set on fire by courage. Fi- 
delity is simply daring to be true in small things 
as well as great. As many as are the conflicts 
and perils and hardships of life, so many are 
the uses and the forms of courage. It is neces- 
sary, indeed, as the protector and defender of 
all the other virtues. Courage is the standing 
army of the soul which keeps it from conquest, 
pillage, and slavery. 

Unless we are brave we can hardly be truth- 
ful, or generous, or just, or pure, or kind, or 
loyal. “Few persons,” says a wise observer, 
“have the courage to appear as good as they 
really are.” You must be brave in order to 
fulfil your own possibilities of virtue. Courage 
is essential to guard the best qualities of the 
soul, and to clear the way for their action, and 
make them move with freedom and vigour. 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


“Courage, the highest gift , that scorns to bend 
To mean devices for a sordid end; 

Courage, an independent spark from Heaven's throne. 

By which the soul stands raised, triumphant , high, alone; 
The sjyring of all true acts is seated here. 

As falsehoods draw their sordid birth from fear ” 

If we desire to be good, we must first of all 
desire to be brave, that against all opposition, 
scorn, and danger we may move straight on- 
ward to do the right. 

In the third place, courage is a comfortable 
virtue. It fills the soul with inward peace and 
strength; in fact this is just what it is, — courage 
is simply strength of heart. Subjection to fear 
is weakness, bondage, feverish unrest. To be 
afraid is to have no soul that we can call our 
own; it is to be at the beck and call of alien 
powers, to be chained and driven and tormented; 
it is to lose the life itself in the anxious care to 
keep it. Many people are so afraid to die that 
they have never begun to live. But courage 
emancipates us and gives us to ourselves, that 
we may give ourselves freely and without fear 
to God. How sweet and clear and steady is 
the life into which this virtue enters day by 
day, not merely in those great flashes of excite- 
ment which come in the moments of crisis, but 
in the presence of the hourly perils, the continual 
88 


COURAGE 


conflicts. Not to tremble at the shadows which 
surround us, not to shrink from the foes who 
threaten us, not to hesitate and falter and stand 
despairing still among the perplexities and trials 
of our life, but to move steadily onward without 
fear, if only we can keep ourselves without re- 
proach, — surely that is what the Psalmist meant 
by good courage, and it is a most comfortable, 
pleasant, peaceful, and happy virtue. 

Let us consider what we mean by this virtue, 
how we can obtain it, and what good it will 
do us. 

I. First of all, let us try to understand the 
difference between courage and some of the 
things which are often mistaken for it. 

There is a sharp distinction between courage 
and recklessness. The reckless man is igno- 
rant; he rushes into danger without hesitation, 
simply because he does not know what danger 
means. The brave man is intelligent; he faces 
danger because he understands it and is pre- 
pared to meet it. The drunkard who runs, in 
the delirium of intoxication, into a burning 
house is not brave; he is only stupid. But the 
clear-eyed hero who makes his way, with every 
sense alert and every nerve strung, into the hell 
of flames to rescue some little child, proves his 
courage. 


89 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


The more keenly we are awake to the perils 
of life, the higher and grander is the possibility 
of being truly brave. To drift along, as some 
people do, through this world, as if there were 
nothing in it to fear; to slide easily downward, 
as some people do, to the gate of death, as if 
there were nothing beyond it to fear; to sport 
and dance, and eat and drink and sleep, as some 
people do, under the arch of heaven, as if there 
were no One above it to fear, — what is this but 
the part of the fool who hath said in his heart, 
“ There is no God, there is no sin, there is no 
judgment”? But to face the temptations and 
perplexities and dangers of the world without 
yielding to fear; to pass, without trembling, by 
the dark portals of the grave in a faith that is 
stronger than fear; to dare to live in the presence 
of the holy, mighty God in the confidence of a 
love that casteth out fear, — that is courage. 

Then there is another sharp distinction be- 
tween courage and insensibility. Some natures 
are so constituted that they do not feel pain very 
keenly. Their nerves are sluggish and deeply 
hidden. This may be an advantage or a dis- 
advantage; for certainly, if they escape some 
possibilities of suffering, they must also lose 
many possibilities of enjoyment. But one thing 
is sure: to persons of this temperament, fear is 
90 


COURAGE 


comparatively a stranger. They can move for- 
ward almost with indifference in situations where 
a more sensitive nature would be profoundly 
agitated. Now we must not suppose for a mo- 
ment that this insensibility makes them brave. 
It simply exempts them in some measure from 
the necessity of courage. The bravest soul is 
that which feels the tremor and resists it, shrinks 
from the flame and faces it. Never was a better 
soldier than the old French marshal Montluc, 
who said that he had often gone into battle 
trembling, and had recovered courage only when 
he had said a prayer. A pale face, a shaking 
hand, yes, even a heart that stands still with 
dread, may belong to a hero who is brave enough 
to carry them into the midst of conflict without 
faltering or failing, straight on to victory or 
death. Courage does not consist in the absence 
of fear, but in the conquest of it. 

Take it in little things. Here is the great, 
dull, heavy dray-horse; what is it for him to 
move stolidly on through noises which do not 
alarm him, and past strange objects which he 
does not notice? But when the high-mettled, 
keen-sensed thoroughbred goes through the 
same tumult, and past the same objects, with 
every nerve and muscle quivering, that is cour- 
age. It demands no great effort for the voya - 
91 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


geur 9 who is inured to hardships and trained 
to steadiness, to guide his frail canoe through 
the foaming rapids. But for a woman who is 
by nature sensitive and timid, to sit quiet and 
silent in the boat, not because she has no fear, 
but because she will not yield to it, — that is 
brave. 

The same thing is true in moral trials. There 
are some people to whom reproach and ridicule 
and condemnation mean little. They simply do 
not care; they are pachydermatous. But there 
are others to whom the unkind word is like a 
blow, and the sneer like a sword-thrust, and the 
breath of contempt like the heat of flames; 
and when they endure these things and face 
them, and will not be driven by them from the 
path of duty, they are truly courageous. 

Timidity is no more inconsistent with courage 
than doubt is inconsistent with faith. For as 
faith is simply the overriding and subjugating 
of doubt by believing where you cannot prove, 
so courage is simply the conquest and sup- 
pression of fear by going straight on in the path 
of duty and love. 

There is one more distinction that needs to 
be drawn, — the distinction between courage and 
daring. This distinction is not in kind, but in 
degree. For daring is only a rare and excep- 


COURAGE 


tional kind of courage. It is for great occasions; 
the battle, the shipwreck, , the conflagration. 
It is an inspiration; Emerson calls it “a flash of 
moral genius.” But courage in the broader 
sense is an every-day virtue. It includes the 
possibility of daring, if it be called for; but 
from hour to hour, in the long, steady run of 
life, courage manifests itself in quieter, humbler 
forms, — in patience under little trials, in per- 
severance in distasteful labours, in endurance 
of suffering, in resistance of continual and fa- 
miliar temptations, in hope and cheerfulness and 
activity and fidelity and truthfulness and kind- 
ness, and such sweet, homely virtues as may find 
a place in the narrowest and most uneventful 
life. 

There is no duty so small, no trial so slight, 
that it does not afford room for courage. It has 
a meaning and value for every phase of existence; 
for the workshop and for the battlefield, for the 
thronged city and for the lonely desert, for the 
sick-room and for the market-place, for the 
study and for the counting-house, for the church 
and for the drawing-room. There is courage 
physical, and social, and moral, and intellec- 
tual, — a soldier’s courage, a doctor’s courage, 
a lawyer’s courage, a preacher’s courage, a 
nurse’s courage, a merchant’s courage, a man’s 
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courage, a woman’s courage, — for courage is 
just strength of heart, and the strong heart 
makes itself felt everywhere, and lifts up the 
whole of life, and ennobles it, and makes it 
move directly to its chosen aim. 

II. Now, if this is what we mean by courage, 
how are we to obtain it ? What is it that really 
strengthens the heart and makes it brave? 

There are many lesser things that will help 
us, such as a simple and wholesome visible 
life, plain food and vigorous exercise, a steady 
regard for great moral principles and ideas, a 
healthful course of reading, a sincere friendship 
with brave and true and single-minded men and 
women, a habit of self-forgetfulness and conse- 
cration to duty. But of these things I have 
not time to speak, for there is something greater 
and better than any of these, — something which 
in fact includes them all and sums them up in a 
word, “Wait on the Lord.” That is the truest 
and deepest source of courage. To believe that 
he is, and that he has made us for himself; to 
love him, and give ourselves up to him, because 
he is holy and true and wise and good and brave 
beyond all human thought; to lean upon him 
and trust him and rest in him, with confidence 
that he will never leave us nor forsake us; to 
work for him, and suffer for his sake, and be 


COURAGE 

faithful to his service, — that is the way to learn 
courage. 

Without God what can you do? You are a 
frail, weak, tempted, mortal creature. The 
burdens of life will crush you, the evils of sin 
will destroy you, the tempests of trouble will 
overwhelm you, the darkness of death will en- 
gulf you. But if you are joined to God, you can 
resist and endure and fight and conquer, in his 
strength. This is what the Psalmist means in 
the text, “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, 
and he shall strengthen thy heart.” So runs 
our translation. The scholars tell us that it 
ought to read, “Be of good courage and let thy 
heart be strong.” But the meaning is the same. 
For the courage comes from the waiting on God, 
and he is the giver of strength to the heart. 

“If it had not been the Lord who was on our 
side, now may Israel say, then the proud waters 
had gone over our souls.” It was the Lord who 
stood by them and sustained them through the 
storm. Hear Paul: “If God be for us, who can 
be against us?” And again, “I can do all 
things through Christ who strengtheneth me.” 
And then hear Christ: “My meat is to do the 
will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.” 
That is the secret of courage. The lamp that 
is joined to the electric current glows with light. 

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The soul that is joined to the infinite source of 
courage in God, burns steadfast, serene, and 
inextinguishable through life and death. 

III. How will that divine courage help us 
if we obtain it ? What will it do for us ? 

Everything. There is no good thing that we 
really desire and need that will not be brought 
nearer to us by this strength of heart. Every 
day and every hour of our lives it will be a help, 
a joy, a treasure, a blessing to us. 

You men have to go through with your daily 
toil, and face the perplexities of business life, 
and resist the temptations to dishonesty and 
meanness and uncleanness which touch you on 
every side. You must be brave, and if you are 
brave in Christ you will win. 

You women have to meet your daily house- 
hold cares, and suffer the pains and trials which 
belong to a woman’s life, and restrain your 
lips from scandal and your hearts from jealousy 
and envy, and keep your souls up above the 
deadening influences of luxury and frivolity and 
fashion. You must be brave, — never does cour- 
age shine more brightly than in a true woman, — 
and if you are brave you will “adorn the doc- 
trine of God our Saviour” with the charm of 
pure, unselfish, lovely character and conduct 
which is a rebuke to all grossness of demeanour, 
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COURAGE 


and an encouragement to all knighthood and 
true chivalry. For such women men would 
even dare to die. 

You boys and girls at school, young men and 
maidens at college, have to do your work hon- 
estly, and speak the truth fearlessly, and avoid 
evil companionship steadfastly, and live up to 
your principles modestly and firmly. You must 
be brave, and sometimes very brave, to do this, 
and if you have the right courage in the con- 
flicts of youth you will be trained by them to 
play a noble part in the great battle of life. 

Indeed, we all have the same need. For 
every one of us, there is nothing more desirable, 
nothing more necessary, than real strength of 
heart. If we can obtain it from the divine and 
only source, it will make our lives straight and 
clean and fine. It will enable us to follow Jesus 
of Nazareth, who was not only the purest and 
the gentlest, but also the bravest Spirit that 
ever dwelt on earth. 

And do you think, if that kind of courage 
comes into our hearts, — the courage of faith, 
which believes in spite of difficulties, and fights 
its way through doubt to a firmer assurance; 
the courage of confession, which overcomes all 
dread of ridicule or reproach, and is not ashamed 
of Christ nor of his words, but ready to preach 
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the Gospel at Rome also; the courage of life, 
which goes on trying to be good in spite of fail- 
ures, and holding fast to the ideal in spite of 
temptations, and warring for the right in spite 
of heavy odds, and bearing the appointed bur- 
den in spite of weariness, straight through to 
the end: do you think the courage of death will 
fail us? We do not know when we shall have 
to meet that last conflict, that ultimate adven- 
ture. But when the hour comes, if we have 
been brave enough to live aright, we shall be 
brave enough to die at peace. 


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Y 


POWER 


“ To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary ” 
—Psalm 63 : 2. 

“ That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection ” — Phil. 3 : 10. 

1LTERE are two men separated by centuries, — 
the psalmist of the old dispensation and 
the apostle of the new dispensation, — uttering 
the deepest desire of their hearts. In both of 
them we find that there is an earnest and ardent 
longing to see, to know, the power of God. In 
both of them there is the recognition of a place, 
a way, in which that power is manifested and 
in which it may be discerned; in both of them 
there is the confident expectation that the 
knowledge of that power, when it is attained, will 
be potent in its spiritual effect upon their lives. 

We may be quite sure that the thing for which 
David and Paul longed so ardently is some- 
thing which we also ought to desire, and pray 
for, and seek after. If they needed it, we need 
it. If it was possible for them to find it, it is 
possible for us. If it was good for them, it 
will be good for us. Let us think about it for 
a little while; for it is only by thinking about 
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great and good things that we come to love 
them, and it is only by loving them that we come 
to long for them, and it is only by longing for 
them that we are impelled to seek after them, 
and it is only by seeking after them that they 
become ours. 

Is not this the reason why our lives often seem 
so narrow and poor and weak, why they have 
such a sense of limitation and constriction in 
them, why their interests seem so trivial, their 
possibilities so small, their results so feeble, 
why we often appear to ourselves barren in 
thought and dry in feeling, empty of hope and 
bankrupt in power ? Is it not because we think 
so much of the things that are petty and narrow 
and barren and transient, and so little of the 
things that are great and fruitful and glorious 
and eternal? These dry and thirsty lives of 
ours, these dull, stale, flat, and unprofitable 
lives of ours, these paltry lives, — whose fault 
is it that they are so? Ours, and ours alone. 
For the riches of an infinite wealth and the pow- 
ers of an immeasurable strength are all about 
us waiting for us to possess and use them. But 
there is only one way in which we can enter into 
their possession, and that is by thinking about 
them, by considering them earnestly and steadily 
until they draw us to themselves. 

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POWER 


The strength of your life is measured by the 
strength of your will. But the strength of your 
will is just the strength of the wish that lies 
behind it. And the strength of your wish de- 
pends upon the sincerity and earnestness and 
tenacity with which you fix your attention upon 
the things which are really great and worthy 
to be loved. This is what the Apostle means 
when he says, at the close of his description of a 
life which is strong, and inwardly renewed, and 
growing in glory even in the midst of afflic- 
tion, — “ while we look not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are unseen.” 
It is while we look that we learn to love. It is 
by loving that we learn to seek. And it is in 
seeking that we find and are blessed. 

Let us be sure, then, that it is no mere profit- 
less speculation about mysteries of no practical 
value to which our double text invites us. It is 
a thought that enriches, ennobles, strengthens, 
blesses. It is a meditation by which our lives 
will be enlarged and uplifted and invigorated. 
It is for the sake of a joy which will be like music 
in our souls among life’s discords; it is for the 
sake of a strength of spirit which will be to us 
like a wind from heaven sending us forward on 
our course as ships that cleave the waves and 
triumph against the tides; it is in order that we 
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may “have life, and have it more abundantly/’ 
that we are asked to think about the powerful 
knowledge of the power of God. 

I. We may inquire, first, why should we 
wish to see and know the power of God ? 

Well, it seems to me that the vision of power 
is always wonderful and admirable and, in a 
certain sense, beautiful, and therefore a thing 
to be desired for its own sake. The perception 
of a mighty force in action, even in the physical 
world, confers a high and noble pleasure on the 
mind. When the force is sudden and violent, 
as in the case of a great tempest, our pleasure in 
beholding it is mixed with awe, it is a solemn 
and trembling delight; it may be overshadowed 
with fear, or with pity for the misfortunes of 
those who have been overwhelmed by the storm; 
yet the force in itself is magnificent, and the 
sight of it thrills the soul. But when it is an 
orderly and beneficent force that we behold, 
then the vision is one of pure and unmingled 
joy. How glorious, for example, is the sight of 
a great river sweeping down from its source 
among the mountains to its resting-place in the 
sea. How it forces its way among the hills, 
cutting through the rocks and carving a channel 
for itself in the solid earth, leaping boldly from 
the cliffs, and rushing down the steep inclines 
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POWER 


with an energy which needs but to be harnessed 
to do the work of a million men, — this is power, 
we say, power visible, and it is a grand thing to 
see. And the same thing is true of the resist- 
less tides of the ocean on which we look with 
unending wonder and pleasure; true also of the 
might of the imprisoned giant Steam, as we see 
it whirling the wheels of some great engine and 
driving the vast ship by day and night through 
leagues of rolling waters. 

But it is far more true of those forces which 
are more silent and secret, like the heat of the 
sun, or the force of gravitation. We become 
aware of these forces not so much through our 
senses alone as through our thought, our in- 
ward perception. Look at a blade of corn 
cleaving the ground, and remember that all 
over the world countless millions upon millions 
of them are pushing upward with a power 
which taken altogether is simply incalculable; 
and all this lifting of tons of bread out of the 
earth to the hand of man is simply the drawing 
of the sun that shines above you. Look at 
the starry heavens on a clear still night; com- 
panies, regiments, battalions, armies of worlds, 
all marching without haste and without rest, 
keeping pace in their majestic orbits; and the 
force that binds them to their courses is the same 
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that quietly loosens the ripened apple from the 
bough and drops it at your feet. Surely a 
thought like this is a vision of power, and it is 
good for the soul. 

But it is doubly good to know that it is all 
the power of God. To understand that all the 
mighty energy which throbs and pulses through 
the universe, comes from him, that force is but 
the effluence of his will, and law but the expres- 
sion of his wisdom; to stand before some vast 
manifestation of power in nature and feel that 
it is only an infinitesimal fraction, only a pass- 
ing play of the omnipotence of God; to see him 
hurl Niagara into the gulf more easily than you 
would pour a glass of water on the ground, — 
is good for the soul. It humbles and exalts. 
It begets that awe of spirit which is essential 
to true religion. We want a mighty God, one 
who can hold the winds and the waves in the 
hollow of his hand. And for our own sake, for 
the sake of a deeper reverence and a firmer con- 
fidence towards him, we ought to wish to see 
the evidence of divine power in the great ele- 
mental forces of nature. 

But there is another kind of power still more 
wonderful, still more impressive than that of 
which we have been speaking. It is spiritual 
power, — the power which is manifested in the 
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POWER 


conquest of evil, in the triumph of virtue, in 
the achievements and victories of a moral being. 
This is grander and more admirable than any 
physical force that has ever acted upon the 
universe of matter. 

“For tho 9 the giant ages heave the hill 
And break the shore , and evermore 
Make and break, and work their will; 

Tho ’ world on world in myriad myriads roll 
Around us, each with different powers 
And other forms of life than ours , 

What know we greater than the soul?” 

The vision of spiritual power, even as we see 
it in the imperfect manifestations of human life, 
is uplifting. The rush of courage along the 
perilous path of duty is finer than the foaming 
leap of the torrent from the crag. Integrity 
resisting temptation overtops the mountains in 
grandeur. Love, giving and blessing without 
stint, has a beauty and a potency of which the 
sunlight is but a faint image. When we see 
these things they thrill us with joy; they enlarge 
and enrich our souls. 

And if that is true, how much more satis- 
fying and strengthening must it be to behold 
the spiritual power of God? For God also is 
a soul, the Great Soul; the essence of his being is 
not physical but moral; and the secret of his 
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strength is in his holiness, righteousness, justice, 
goodness, mercy, and love. To know something 
of the force of the great Spirit; to see that there 
is no temptation that can even shake the strong 
foundation of his equity, no evil that can finally 
resist the victorious sweep of his holy will, no 
falsehood that can withstand the penetrating 
flash of his truth, nothing that can limit or ex- 
haust the great tide of his love; to catch sight 
of the workings of One who is omnipotent 
against all foes and therefore triumphant over 
the last enemy, death, — that is a vision of joy 
and power far beyond all others, and therefore 
it is to be desired and prayed for and sought 
after with the whole heart. 

But, after all, we have not yet touched the 
deepest and strongest reason why we should long 
to see and know the power of God. We have 
been moving hitherto upon the surface; let us 
pierce now to the centre. The great reason why 
we need to consider God’s power is because we 
are utterly dependent on that power for the 
salvation of our souls. Without it there is no 
peace, no hope, no certainty. Unless God is 
mighty to save, we can never be saved. 

The religion of the Bible differs from all 
others in two points. The first is, that it makes 
salvation the hardest thing in the world. The 
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POWER 

second is, that it makes salvation the easiest 
thing in the world. 

How lofty, how inaccessible is the standard of 
holiness revealed in this religion ! How im- 
mense are its requirements and conditions ! 
Other religions set before us ideals which seem 
by comparison like the foothills of the Jura, 
somewhat more elevated indeed than the sur- 
rounding valleys, but still smooth and easy, 
with gradual paths and footholds. But Christi- 
anity lifts Mont Blanc before our eyes, serene, 
remote, awful in its dazzling splendour, and bids 
us climb to holiness without which no man shall 
see God. “Be ye perfect, even as your father 
which is in heaven is perfect.” What hope is 
there of attaining to that shining height? 

I wonder if any of you have ever had the 
feeling that has come to me in reading Christ’s 
Sermon on the Mount. It is a feeling of great 
distance and almost intolerable remoteness, — a 
feeling as if one should come to a mighty cliff, 
towering far up into heaven, crowned with 
eternal beauty and radiance, and hear a voice 
crying from that far height, “Come up hither 
and dwell with me!” When I listen to those 
wonderful beatitudes, when I hear those search- 
ing demands for a purity which is stainless in 
deed, in word, in thought, and in feeling, when 
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I see how strait is the gate and how narrow is 
the way that leadeth unto life, a sense of utter 
helplessness sweeps through me and my spirit 
is overwhelmed within me. 

And is not the same thing true even when we 
take shorter and more limited views of the duties 
and requirements of the Christian life? Here 
are these faults and vices and evil habits with 
which we have been struggling. We have used 
all the force that we have against them, and yet 
they are not extirpated. How shall they ever 
be conquered? Is it not a hopeless conflict? 
Here we have been trying to do our duty, and 
putting all our hearts into the effort to be good 
and to do good, and yet so little is accomplished, 
so far do we come short. More must be done; 
we must be better; we must live higher and 
holier and more useful lives. But where is 
strength to come from since we have already 
used all that we possess? How shall we over- 
come greater difficulties when we have already 
taxed ourselves to the uttermost in coming thus 
far? how render larger service when we have 
already strained our powers to the breaking- 
point? Next year’s temptations, how shall we 
conquer them? Next year’s work, how shall 
we do it? 

Not even the wise and needful reminder 
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that the Christian life is gradual is sufficient to 
deliver us from this sense of helplessness. It 
is true, of course, that “heaven is not reached 
at a single bound,” that only to-day’s burdens 
are to be borne to-day, that growth in grace is 
like the blade and the ear and the full corn in 
the ear; and it helps us immensely to remember 
this. But, after all, this does not quite reach 
the heart of our trouble. Even a power which 
is to be gradually exercised has its limits. 
Steam can do so much, and no more. Elec- 
tricity can do so much, and no more. But the 
Christian life is unlimited; it rises forever; it 
advances without end; its goal is perfection. 
What does it profit the blade of corn to go on 
maturing its poor little kernels, if at last it will 
be required to bear some celestial and imperish- 
able fruit ? What does it advantage the pilgrim 
to climb painfully the lower slopes, if the sum- 
mit of the pass is inaccessible? Some little 
human goodness, some advance in virtue, we 
may perhaps attain; but a perfect holiness is 
out of our reach. Look at heaven, — a kingdom 
of unsullied love; look at the life of the glorified 
saints, sorrowless, tearless, sinless, dwelling in 
perfect and deathless fellowship with God, — is 
not that beyond our power ? 

Yes, it is; and yet it is the ideal set before us 
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in the word of God; and therefore we say that 
the Bible makes salvation the hardest thing in 
the world, makes it something that would be 
impossible and hopeless, if it did not at the same 
time make it easy and accessible and possible 
for every human soul. For this is what the 
Bible does: it reveals that our salvation is all 
of God; it reveals that the power that worketh 
in us is his power, and that it is able to do ex- 
ceeding abundantly above all that we can ask 
or think. 

And now we can see the real reason why the 
Psalmist and the Apostle prayed so earnestly 
to know the power of God, and why the truest 
and best of human souls have always repeated 
that prayer in many forms and in many lan- 
guages, and why we ought to take it up and make 
it truly our own. It is because that power is 
our hope and our salvation. David was a strong 
man, but he knew that he could never conquer 
sin in his own strength. Paul was a strong man, 
but he knew that he was often unable to do the 
things that he would; he knew that he was not 
sufficient for these things; the spirit was willing, 
but the flesh was weak; he felt that he was 
bound like a captive to a body of sin and death. 
And so they both longed and cried, so we should 
long and cry, to know something greater than 
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human strength, even the power of the mighty 
God unto salvation. 

II. So we come to our second question : How 
may this spiritual power of God be known? 

There is a twofold answer; and yet it is really 
one, for both parts of it belong together, and 
the latter supplements and completes the former, 
even as the sunrise is the fulfilment of the dawn. 

The Psalmist says, “My soul thirsteth for 
thee, to see thy power and thy glory, even as I 
have seen thee in the sanctuary.” By this I 
think he means that the power of God may be 
known in the experiences of religion. Not only 
in his own soul, as he has confessed his sin and 
found pardon, as he has prayed for help and 
been strengthened, as he has asked for deliver- 
ance and been lifted out of the horrible pit and 
the miry clay, as he has implored guidance and 
been led in a plain path, — not only in his own 
soul, but also in the souls of his brother-men who 
have been delivered in the same perils, and 
helped in the same conflicts, and strengthened 
in the same sanctuary by humble faith and ear- 
nest prayer and true surrender to the Spirit of 
God, the Psalmist has seen the workings of 
Divine power, and so he longs to see them again. 

The same vision is open to us. Every grace 
that God has given to us in the past, every touch 
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of his life that has quickened us, every assistance 
of his Spirit that has supported us and given us 
a victory over evil, is a proof and evidence of 
his power. Let us remember and trust. 

Was it long ago, or was it but yesterday, that 
we came to him with that heavy weight of sin, 
and, asking for relief, found it? Come then, 
and, kneeling at his feet to-day, with a yet 
heavier load, it may be, prove the same almighty 
strength to deliver from sin. Was it long ago, 
or was it yesterday, that we felt that thrill of 
new life, of consecration, of devotion passing 
through us as we gave ourselves to God ? Come 
then, and, renewing the gift to-day, feel again 
the same touch of power. Was it long ago, or 
was it but yesterday, that we prayed for strength 
to perform a certain duty, to bear a certain 
burden, to overcome a certain temptation, and 
received it? Do we dream that the Divine 
force was exhausted in answering that one 
prayer? No more than the great river is ex- 
hausted by turning the wheels of one mill. 
Put it to the proof again with to-day’s duty, 
to-day’s burden, to-day’s temptation. Thrust 
yourself further and deeper into the stream of 
God’s power, and feel it again, as you have felt 
it before, able to do exceeding abundantly. 
Remember and trust. “Thou hast been my 

in 


POWER 

help: leave me not, neither forsake me, 0 God 
of my salvation.” 

But there are times when these memories of 
power experienced in the past grow faint and 
dim, times when it seems that all we can see 
behind us is a long succession of failures, and 
all we can feel now is a pervading sense of weak- 
ness. At such times it is good to consider the 
mighty things which God has wrought in and 
through other lives. He has lifted the hands 
that hung down, and strengthened the feeble 
knees. He has made the evil good; the sinful, 
pure; the selfish, generous; the base, noble. He 
has made apostles and saints out of men and 
women that the world would have thrown away 
as rubbish. The whole New Testament is just 
a record of that, — Peter, the weak and wayward ; 
Mary Magdalen, the defiled; Zaccheus, the 
worldly; Thomas, the despondent; Paul, the 
persecutor and blasphemer. What God could 
do in the first century, he can do, he is doing, to- 
day. 

What is it that we want? Is it faith to con- 
quer doubt? There are men and women all 
around us believing in the face of difficulties 
greater than ours. Is it patience under trials? 
There are men and women all around us who 
are bearing trials as heavy as ours without 
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a murmur. Is it usefulness ? Consider the 
mighty works that God has wrought through 
the hands of man. Think of the great influence 
of the thousands of Sunday-schools scattered 
all over the world. How did that begin? In 
the efforts of poor printer Robert Raikes to 
teach the ragged children of Gloucester. Think 
of the beautiful charity which carries vast mul- 
titudes of little ones every summer out of the 
crowded city into the fresh air of the country. 
How did that begin? In the attempt of a 
country minister to bring a score of poor chil- 
dren to spend a few days in the farmhouses of 
his scanty parish. What can we do ? Nothing. 
What can God do with us? Anything; what- 
soever he will. 

But perhaps you will say, “This does not help 
me so much, after all. For these men and wo- 
men are separated from me. I do not really 
know them, nor they me. There is no bond 
between us, nothing to make me partaker of 
their life. In fact, they are so far above me that 
it humiliates me even to think of them, and if 
they knew me there is no reason to think that 
they could do anything else than look down upon 
me in my selfishness, weakness, and sin.” 

To one who is in this state of mind I think 
Paul is more helpful than David, the New Testa- 
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ment more precious than the Old. Let us turn, 
then, to the way in which the apostle sought 
to know and feel the power of God. “That I 
may know him,” he cried, that is Christ, “and 
the power of his resurrection.” And in another 
place he said: “That ye may know what is the 
exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who 
believe, according to the working of his mighty 
power which he wrought in Christ when he 
raised him from the dead.” That is the true 
proof and manifestation of the spiritual power of 
God; the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ, 
conqueror of sin and death. 

Remember that it is a real human life, lived 
in the same flesh and blood, under the same con- 
ditions and limitations as ours, made human in 
order that it might be like ours. Remember 
that the strength of it is not physical but spir- 
itual, the same Spirit of God dwelling in Jesus 
whom God promises to give to all that ask him. 
Remember that its triumph over falsehood and 
temptation and sin and death is one triumph, 
and that the resurrection is but the final work- 
ing of the same power which worked all through 
the holy life of Jesus, so that he conquered the 
grave with the same might with which he over- 
came evil. Remember that this life is given to 
us and for us, so that we may belong to it, as 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


the branches belong to the vine, as the members 
belong to the body. Remember that Christ 
says: “ Without me ye can do nothing, but 
lo ! I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world. He that believeth on me, the 
works that I do shall he do also. Where I am, 
there shall ye be also.” Remember these things, 
and we shall understand what Paul means by 
knowing the power of his resurrection. It is 
to know that the greatest spiritual power in 
the universe, the power which made Jesus Christ 
perfect in holiness, is ready to enter and work 
in us, and that he who raised up Jesus from the 
dead shall quicken our mortal bodies by his 
Spirit that dwelleth in us. 

III. Now what practical effect will this 
knowledge of the mighty power of God have 
in our lives? David thinks chiefly of one ef- 
fect; Paul chiefly of another. 

The prominent thought in the psalm is the 
joy that comes from seeing God’s power: “My 
soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fat- 
ness, and my mouth shall praise thee with joy- 
ful lips.” And surely that is a good thing. Joy 
is essential to true religion. A gloomy religion 
is far from God. A sad gospel is a contradic- 
tion in terms, like a black sun. “Behold,” said 
the angel, “I bring you good tidings of great 
116 


POWER 


joy, which shall be to all people.” And that 
message was simply the news of a great power 
which had appeared in the world for salvation. 
David, indeed, did not hear this message in its 
fulness, did not see this power in its perfection. 
But he heard the promise of it, he felt the thrill 
of its coming. His hope was in God. “I have 
set the Lord always before me; because he is 
at my right hand I shall not be moved. There- 
fore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; 
my flesh also shall rest in hope.” Yes, God is 
light, God is love, God is power; and there- 
fore God is hope. 

Little does he know of true joy who knows 
not this. Lightly, foolishly, falsely does he 
think of the great resistant force of evil, the 
tremendous difficulties of being good, the vast 
inertia of a world lying in sin, who exults in 
aught else than the knowledge of a Divine power 
able to overcome it all. When we look at the 
follies and vices and crimes and shames which 
still exist among men, when we see the immense 
obstacles which stand in the way of the spir- 
itual progress of humanity, when we discern 
the dark and sullen and obstinate influences 
which are potent in our own hearts, despair 
for ourselves and for the world seems natural, 
pessimism right and inevitable. Will the slen- 
117 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


der ray of light that shines on the mountain- 
top ever conquer the huge darkness ? 

Well, that depends on the source from which 
it springs. If it comes only from a fire kindled 
there by human hands, it will go out again when 
the fuel is exhausted. But if it comes from the 
sun, it will grow until the night is vanquished. 
And that is what the Bible tells us. Behind 
every manifestation of spiritual life there is 
the Spirit. Behind Christianity there is Christ. 
Behind Christ there is God. For he is the 
brightness of the Father’s glory, and the ex- 
press image of his person; and the power that 
works in him, the power that has raised him 
from the dead and set him at God’s right hand 
in heavenly places, is the power that is saving 
every one that believeth, and reconciling the 
world to God. When we know that, despair 
ceases to exist, and joy fills the heart with 
music. 

But in Paul’s mind there is another thought. 
It is the thought of the strength, the vigour, 
the energy that come from this knowledge. 
“This one thing I do,” he says: “Forgetting 
those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those things which are before, I press 
towards the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus.” And else- 
118 


POWER 


where, again and again, he expresses the same 
thought. At the close of that glorious chapter 
on the resurrection, in the First Epistle to the 
Corinthians, he says: “ Therefore, my beloved 
brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable, always 
abounding in the work of the Lord.” And 
again: “Work out your own salvation with 
fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh 
in you.” And again: “I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me.” 

That is the secret of strength; to know the 
Divine power and to use it. The man who does 
not use it cannot really know it. 

The Christian who says, “I know the power 
of God, and I am trusting in that to save me 
and sustain me, and make me useful, and bring 
me to heaven,” and yet makes no real effort 
to be good or to do good, is like a man sitting 
on the bank of a mighty river, and casting chips 
upon its sweeping tide, and saying, “This river 
is able to bear me to my journey’s end.” What 
you need to do is to push your boat out into the 
current, and feel its resistless force, and move 
onward with it. Then you will know the power 
that now you only know about. 


119 


VI 

SALT* 

“ Ye are the sail of the earth” — St. Matt. 5 : 13. 

rpHIS figure of speech is plain and pungent. 

Salt is savory, purifying, preservative. 
From the very beginning of human history 
men have set a high value upon it and sought 
for it in caves and by the seashore. The na- 
tion that had a good supply of it was counted 
rich. A bag of salt, among the barbarous tribes, 
was worth more than a man. The Jews prized 
it especially because they lived in a warm 
climate where food was difficult to keep, and 
because their religion laid particular emphasis 
on cleanliness, and because salt was largely 
used in their sacrifices. 

Christ chose an image which was familiar 
when he said to his disciples, “Ye are the salt 
of the earth.” This was his conception of their 
mission, their influence. They were to cleanse 
and sweeten the world in which they lived, to 
keep it from decay, to give a new and more 
wholesome flavour to human existence. Their 

* Baccalaureate sermon, Harvard University, June, 1898. 

no 


SALT 


character was not to be passive, but active. 
The sphere of its action was to be this present 
life. There is no use in saving salt for heaven. 
It will not be needed there. Its mission is to 
permeate, season, and purify things on earth. 

Now, from one point of view, it was an im- 
mense compliment for the disciples to be spoken 
to in this way. Their Master showed great 
confidence in them. He set a high value upon 
them. The historian Livy could find nothing 
better to express his admiration for the people 
of ancient Greece than this very phrase. He 
called them sol gentium , “the salt of the na- 
tions.” 

But it was not from this point of view that 
Christ was speaking. He was not paying com- 
pliments. He was giving a clear and powerful 
call to duty. His thought was not that his 
disciples should congratulate themselves on 
being better than other men. He wished them 
to ask themselves whether they actually had 
in them the purpose and the power to make 
other men better. Did they intend to exercise 
a purifying, seasoning, saving influence in the 
world? Were they going to make their pres- 
ence felt on earth and felt for good? If not, 
they would be failures and frauds. The savour 
would be out of them. They would be like 

m 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


lumps of rock salt which has lain too long in 
a damp storehouse; good for nothing but to 
be thrown away and trodden under foot; worth 
less than common rock or common clay, because 
it would not even make good roads. 

Men of privilege without power are waste 
material. Men of enlightenment without in- 
fluence are the poorest kind of rubbish. Men 
of intellectual and moral and religious culture, 
who are not active forces for good in society, 
are not worth what it costs to produce and keep 
them. If they pass for Christians they are 
guilty of obtaining respect under false pretenses. 
They were meant to be the salt of the earth. 
And the first duty of salt is to be salty. 

This is the subject on which I want to speak 
to you to-day. The saltiness of salt is the sym- 
bol of a noble, powerful, truly religious life. 

You college students are men of privilege. 
It costs ten times as much, in labour and care 
and money, to bring you out where you are to- 
day as it costs to educate the average man, 
and a hundred times as much as it costs to raise 
a boy without any education. This fact brings 
you face to face with a question : Are you going 
to be worth your salt ? 

You have had mental training and plenty of 
instruction in various branches of learning. 

122 


SALT 


You ought to be full of intelligence. You have 
had moral discipline, and the influences of good 
example have been steadily brought to bear 
upon you. You ought to be full of principle. 
You have had religious advantages and abun- 
dant inducements to choose the better part. 
You ought to be full of faith. What are you 
going to do with your intelligence, your prin- 
ciple, your faith ? It is your duty to make ac- 
tive use of them for the seasoning, the cleans- 
ing, the saving of the world. Do not be sponges. 
Be the salt of the earth. 

I. Think, first, of the influence for good 
which men of intelligence may exercise in the 
world if they will only put their culture to the 
right use. Half the troubles of mankind come 
from ignorance — ignorance which is systemat- 
ically organized with societies for its support 
and newspapers for its dissemination — igno- 
rance which consists less in not knowing things 
than in willfully ignoring the things that are 
already known. There are certain physical 
diseases which would go out of existence in ten 
years if people would only remember what has 
been learned. There are certain political and 
social plagues which are propagated only in 
the atmosphere of shallow self-confidence and 
vulgar thoughtlessness. There is a yellow fever 
123 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


of literature specially adapted and prepared 
for the spread of shameless curiosity, incorrect 
information, and complacent idiocy among all 
classes of the population. Persons who fall 
under the influence of this pest become so trium- 
phantly ignorant that they cannot distinguish 
between news and knowledge. They develop 
a morbid thirst for printed matter, and the 
more they read the less they learn. They are 
fit soil for the bacteria of folly and fanaticism. 

Now the men of thought, of cultivation, of 
reason in the community ought to be an anti- 
dote to these dangerous influences. Having 
been instructed in the lessons of history and 
science and philosophy they are bound to con- 
tribute their knowledge to the service of so- 
ciety. As a rule they are willing enough to do 
this for pay, in the professions of law and medi- 
cine and teaching and divinity. What I plead 
for is the wider, nobler, unpaid service which 
an educated man renders to society simply 
by being thoughtful and by helping other men 
to think. 

The college men of a country ought to be its 
most conservative men; that is to say, the 
men who do most to conserve it. They ought 
to be the men whom demagogues cannot in- 
flame nor political bosses pervert. They ought 
124 


SALT 


to bring wild theories to the test of reason, and 
withstand rash experiments with obstinate pru- 
dence. Perpetual thoughtfulness is the price 
of social safety. 

But it is not ignorance alone that works harm 
in the body of society. Passion is equally dan- 
gerous. Take, for instance, a time when w^ar is 
imminent. How easily and how wildly the 
passions of men are roused by the mere talk 
of fighting! How ready they are to plunge 
into a fierce conflict for an unknown motive, 
for a base motive, or for no motive at all ! Edu- 
cated men should be the steadiest opponents 
of war while it is avoidable. But when it be- 
comes inevitable, save at cost of a failure in 
duty and a loss of honour, then they should 
be the most vigorous advocates of carrying 
it to a swift, triumphant, and noble end. No 
man ought to be too much educated to love 
his country and, if need be, to die for it. The 
culture which leaves a man without a flag is 
only one degree less miserable than that which 
leaves him without a God. To be empty of 
enthusiasms and overflowing with criticisms is 
not a sign of cultivation, but of enervation. 
The best learning is that which intensifies a 
man’s patriotism as well as clarifies it. The 
finest education is that which puts a man in 
125 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


closest touch with his fellow-men. The true 
intelligence is that which acts, not as cayenne 
pepper to sting the world, but as salt to cleanse 
and conserve it. 

II. Think, in the second place, of the duty 
which men of moral principle owe to society 
in regard to the evils which corrupt and de- 
grade it. Of the existence of these evils we need 
to be reminded again and again, just because 
we are comparatively clean and decent and 
upright people. Men who live an orderly life 
are in great danger of doing nothing else. We 
wrap our virtue up in little bags of respectabil- 
ity and keep it in the storehouse of a safe repu- 
tation. But if it is genuine virtue it is worthy 
of a better use than that. It is fit, nay it is 
designed and demanded, to be used as salt, 
for the purifying of human life. 

There are multitudes of our fellow-men whose 
existence is dark, confused, and bitter. Some 
of them are groaning under the burden of want; 
partly because of their own idleness or inca- 
pacity, no doubt, but partly also because of the 
rapacity, greed, and injustice of other men. 
Some of them are tortured in bondage to vice; 
partly by their own false choice, no doubt, but 
partly also for want of guidance and good coun- 
sel and human sympathy. Every great city 
126 


SALT 


contains centers of moral decay which an honest 
man cannot think of without horror, pity, and 
dread. The trouble is that many honest folk 
dislike these emotions so much that they shut 
their eyes and walk through the world with 
their heads in the air, breathing a little atmos- 
phere of their own, and congratulating them- 
selves that the world goes very well now. But 
is it well that the things which eat the heart 
out of manhood and womanhood should go on 
in all our great towns ? 

“Is it well that while we range with science , glorying in the 
time , 

City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime ? 

“ There , among the glooming alleys , progress halts on palsied 
feet ; 

Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the 
street. 

“ There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted 
floor , 

And the crowded couch of incest , in the warrens of the poor." 

Even in what we call respectable society, forces 
of corruption are at work. Are there no un- 
righteous practices in business, no false stand- 
ards in social life, no licensed frauds and false- 
hoods in politics, no vile and vulgar tendencies 
in art and literature and journalism, in this 
127 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


sunny and self-complacent modern world of 
which we are a part ? All these things are signs 
of decay. The question for us as men of salt 
is: What are we going to do to arrest and coun- 
teract these tendencies? It is not enough for 
us to take a negative position in regard to them. 
If our influence is to be real, it must be positive. 
It is not enough to say “Touch not the unclean 
thing.” On the contrary, we must touch it, 
as salt touches decay to check and overcome it. 
Good men are not meant to be simply like trees 
planted by rivers of water, flourishing in their 
own pride and for their own sake. They ought 
to be like the eucalyptus trees which have been 
set out in the marshes of the Campagna, from 
which a healthful, tonic influence is said to be 
diffused to countervail the malaria. They 
ought to be like the tree of paradise, “whose 
leaves are for the healing of nations.” 

Where good men are in business, lying and 
cheating and gambling should be more difficult, 
truth and candour and fair dealing should be 
easier and more popular, just because of their 
presence. Where good men are in society, gross- 
ness of thought and speech ought to stand re- 
buked, high ideals and courtliness and chival- 
rous actions and “the desire of fame and all 
that makes a man,” ought to seem at once more 
128 


SALT 


desirable and more attainable to every one 
who comes into contact with them. 

There have been men of this quality in the 
world. It is recorded of Bernardino of Siena, 
that when he came into the room, his gentle- 
ness and purity were so evident that all that 
was base and silly in the talk of his companions 
was abashed and fell into silence. Artists like 
Fra Angelico have made their pictures like 
prayers. Warriors like the Chevalier Bayard 
and Sir Philip Sidney and Henry Havelock and 
Chinese Gordon have dwelt amid camps and 
conflicts as Knights of the Holy Ghost. Phi- 
losophers like John Locke and George Berkeley, 
men of science like Newton and Herschel, poets 
like Wordsworth and Tennyson and Browning, 
have taught virtue by their lives as well as wis- 
dom by their works. Humanitarians like How- 
ard and Wilberforce and Raikes and Charles 
Brace have given themselves to noble causes. 
Every man who will has it in his power to make 
his life count for something positive in the re- 
demption of society. And this is what every 
man of moral principle is bound to do if he 
wants to belong to the salt of the earth. 

There is a loftier ambition than merely to 
stand high in the world. It is to stoop down 
and lift mankind a little higher. There is a 
129 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


nobler character than that which is merely in- 
corruptible. It is the character which acts as 
an antidote and preventive of corruption. Fear- 
lessly to speak the words which bear witness 
to righteousness and truth and purity; pa- 
tiently to do the deeds which strengthen virtue 
and kindle hope in your fellow-men; generously 
to lend a hand to those who are trying to climb 
upward; faithfully to give your support and 
your personal help to the efforts which are mak- 
ing to elevate and purify the social life of the 
world — that is what it means to have salt in 
your character. And that is the way to make 
your life interesting and savoury and power- 
ful. The men that have been happiest, and 
the men that are best remembered, are the 
men that have done good. 

What the world needs to-day is not a new 
system of ethics. It is simply a larger number 
of people who will make a steady effort to live 
up to the system that they have already. There 
is plenty of room for heroism in the plainest 
kind of duty. The greatest of all wars has been 
going on for centuries. It is the ceaseless, glori- 
ous conflict against the evil that is in the world. 
Every warrior who will enter that age-long 
battle may find a place in the army, and win 
his spurs, and achieve honour, and obtain favour 
with the great Captain of the Host, if he will 
130 


SALT 

but do his best to make life purer and finer for 
every one that lives. 

It is one of the burning questions of to-day 
whether university life and training really fit 
men for taking their share in this supreme con- 
flict. There is no abstract answer; but every 
college class that graduates is a part of the con- 
crete answer. Therein lies your responsibility, 
gentlemen. It lies with you to illustrate the 
meanness of an education which produces 
learned shirks and refined skulkers; or to il- 
luminate the perfection of unselfish culture 
with the light of devotion to humanity. It 
lies with you to confess that you have not been 
strong enough to assimilate your privileges; 
or to prove that you are able to use all that 
you have learned for the end for which it was 
intended. I believe the difference in the re- 
sults depends very much less upon the educa- 
tional system than it does upon the personal 
quality of the teachers and the men. Richard 
Porson was a university man, and he seemed 
to live chiefly to drink port and read Greek. 
Thomas Guthrie was a university man, and he 
proved that he meant what he said in his ear- 
nest verse: — 

“Z live for those who love me. 

For those who know me true. 

For the heaven that bends above me , 

131 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


And the good that I can do; 

For the wrongs that need resistance , 

For the cause that lacks assistance , 

For the future in the distance , 

And the good that I can do” 

III. It remains only to speak briefly, in the 
third place, of the part which religion ought to 
play in the purifying, preserving, and sweeten- 
ing of society. Hitherto I have spoken to you 
simply as men of intelligence and men of prin- 
ciple. But the loftiest reach of reason and the 
strongest inspiration of morality is religious 
faith. I know there are some thoughtful men, 
upright men, unselfish and useful men, who say 
that they have no such faith. But they are 
very few. And the reason of their rarity is be- 
cause it is immensely difficult to be unselfish and 
useful and thoughtful, without faith in God, 
and in the divine law, and in the gospel of sal- 
vation, and in the future life. I trust that none 
of you are going to try that experiment. I trust 
that all of you have religion to guide and sus- 
tain you in life’s hard and perilous adventure. 
If you have, I beg you to make sure that it is 
the right kind of religion. The name makes 
little difference. The outward form makes little 
difference. The test of its reality is its power 
to cleanse life and make it worth living; to 
132 


SALT 


save the things that are most precious in our 
existence from corruption and decay; to lend 
a new luster to our ideals and to feed our hopes 
with inextinguishable light; to produce char- 
acters which shall fulfill Christ’s word and be 
the salt of the earth. 

Religion is something which a man cannot 
invent for himself, nor keep to himself. If it 
does not show in his conduct it does not exist 
in his heart. If he has just barely enough of it 
to save himself alone, it is doubtful whether 
he has even enough for that. Religion ought 
to bring out and intensify the flavour of all 
that is best in manhood, and make it fit, to use 
Wordsworth’s noble phrase — 

“ For human nature's daily food." 

Good citizens, honest workmen, cheerful com- 
rades, true friends, gentle men — that is what 
the product of religion should be. And the 
power that produces such men is the great anti- 
septic of society, to preserve it from decay. 

Decay begins in discord. It is the loss of 
balance in an organism. One part of the sys- 
tem gets too much nourishment, another part 
too little. Morbid processes are established. 
Tissues break down. In their debris all sorts 
of malignant growths take root. Ruin follows. 

133 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

Now this is precisely the danger to which the 
social organism is exposed. From this danger 
religion is meant to preserve us. Certainly 
there can be no true Christianity which does 
not aim at this result. It should be a balanc- 
ing, compensating, regulating power. It should 
keep the relations between man and man, be- 
tween class and class, normal and healthful 
and mutually beneficent. It should humble 
the pride of the rich, and moderate the envy of 
the poor. It should soften and ameliorate the 
unavoidable inequalities of life, and transform 
them from causes of jealous hatred into oppor- 
tunities of loving and generous service. If it 
fails to do this it is salt without savour, and 
when a social revolution comes, as the conse- 
quence of social corruption, men will cast out 
the unsalted religion and tread it under foot. 

Was not this what happened in the French 
Revolution? What did men care for the reli- 
gion that had failed to curb sensuality and 
pride and cruelty under the oppression of the 
old regime, the religion that had forgotten to 
deal bread to the hungry, to comfort the af- 
flicted, to break every yoke, and let the op- 
pressed go free? What did they care for the 
religion that had done little or nothing to make 
men understand and love and help one another ? 

134 


SALT 


Nothing. It was the first thing that they threw 
away in the madness of their revolt and tram- 
pled in the mire of their contempt. 

But was the world much better off without 
that false kind of religion than with it? Did 
the revolution really accomplish anything for 
the purification and preservation of society? 
No, it only turned things upside down, and 
brought the elements that had been at the bot- 
tom to the top. It did not really change the 
elements, or sweeten fife, or arrest the processes 
of decay. The only thing that can do this is 
the true kind of religion, which brings men 
closer to one another by bringing them all nearer 
to God. 

Some people say that another revolution is 
coming in our own age and our own country. 
It is possible. There are signs of it. There 
has been a tremendous increase of luxury among 
the rich in the present generation. There has 
been a great increase of suffering among the 
poor in certain sections of our country. It was 
a startling fact that nearly six millions of people 
in 1896 cast a vote of practical discontent with 
the present social and commercial order. It 
may be that we are on the eve of a great over- 
turning. I do not know. I am not a prophet 
nor the son of a prophet. But I know that 
135 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


there is one thing that can make a revolution 
needless, one thing that is infinitely better than 
any revolution; and that is a real revival of 
religion — the religion that has already founded 
the hospital and the asylum and the free school, 
the religion that has broken the fetters of the 
slave and lifted womanhood out of bondage 
and degradation, and put the arm of its protec- 
tion around the helplessness and innocence of 
childhood, the religion that proves its faith by 
its works, and links the preaching of the father- 
hood of God to the practice of the brotherhood 
of man. That religion is true Christianity, with 
plenty of salt in it which has not lost its savour. 

I believe that we are even now in the begin- 
ning of a renaissance of such religion. I believe 
that there is a rising tide of desire to find the 
true meaning of Christ’s teaching, to feel the 
true power of Christ’s life, to interpret the true 
significance of Christ’s sacrifice for the redemp- 
tion of mankind. I believe that never before 
were there so many young men of culture, of 
intelligence, of character, passionately in earnest 
to find the way of making their religion speak, 
not in word only, but in power. I call you to- 
day, my brethren, to take your part, not with 
the idle, the frivolous, the faithless, the selfish, 
the gilded youth, but with the earnest, the 
136 


SALT 


manly, the devout, the devoted, the golden 
youth. I summon you to do your share in the 
renaissance of religion for your own sake, for 
your fellow-men’s sake, for your country’s sake. 
On this fair Sunday, when all around us tells 
of bright hope and glorious promise, let the 
vision of our country, with her perils, with her 
opportunities, with her temptations, with her 
splendid powers, with her threatening sins, rise 
before our souls. What needs she more, in 
this hour, than the cleansing, saving, conserv- 
ing influence of right religion? What better 
service could we render her than to set our lives 
to the tune of these words of Christ, and be in- 
deed the salt of our country, and, through her 
growing power, of the whole earth ? Ah, bright 
will be the day, and full of glory, when the bells 
of every church, of every schoolhouse, of every 
college, of every university, ring with the music 
of this message, and find their echo in the hearts 
of the youth of America. That will be the chime 
of a new age. 

“ Ring in the valiant man and free. 

The larger heart , the kindlier hand; 

Ring out the darkness of the land , 

Ring in the Christ that is to be .” 


137 


VII 

THE OPEN DOOR* 


’1 am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall 
go in and out, and find 'pasture.” — John 10 : 9. 



HRIST taught by pictures as well as by 


^ parables. He came into the world to be 
the Saviour of men. What that meant in all 
its fullness could not be put into any doctrine, 
any theory, any description. So Christ looked 
around him in the world of life, and whatever 
he saw that was beautiful and useful and pre- 
cious he claimed and used as a picture of him- 


self. 


It seems as if he were always saying to men, 
4 6 You do not know what my coming to you 
really means. You think that I have come 
merely to teach you something or perhaps to 
do something for you. No: I have come to 
be something in your life. All that is best and 
most needful and most glorious is but a type 
and symbol of what I am. I am the bread of 

* Moderator’s sermon at the One Hundred and Fourteenth General 
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., New York, May 18, 
1902. 


138 


THE OPEN DOOR 


heaven, I am the water of life, I am the light 
of the world, I am the true vine, I am the good 
shepherd, I am the lamb of God, I am the way, 
the truth, and the life.” 

Among these “I ams” of Christ, the picture 
in the text, “I am the door,” seems at first lowly 
and commonplace, not worthy to be compared 
with the other images which our Lord uses to 
reveal himself. A door is an ordinary affair, 
made by man, for an everyday purpose. We 
pass through a hundred doors daily without 
noticing them. But think for a moment what 
the door means; what is its real significance in 
life? 

The door is the way of entrance into any 
building or structure. It signifies, therefore, 
the right of admission to all that the building 
stands for. The open door says “Come in.” 
In the home, the door means access to the inner 
circle of love and joy and peace. In the fortress, 
the door means escape from danger, entrance 
into safety and security. In the temple the 
door means the right of approach to the mercy- 
seat of God, the privilege of communion with 
those who worship and serve him. Thus in 
all ancient religions the doorway was regarded 
as a sacred place. The threshold of the house 
was the primitive altar, and the “threshold- 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

covenant” was one of the earliest forms of reli- 
gion. 

But the door is not only the way of entrance. 
It is also the way of egress. It leads in and it 
leads out. It is the symbol of liberty as well as 
the symbol of peace. A door through which 
you can pass only in one direction is not a door : 
it is a trap. The dwellers in a human home use 
the door not only to enter into their place of 
rest but also to go out to their places of work. 
The door of the fortress would not fulfill its 
purpose if it only let the garrison in; it must 
also swing free to let the soldiers forth to battle 
and conquest. The temple doors invite the 
worshipers to praise God in the sanctuary; but 
they also remind us of the duty and privilege 
of going out from the holy place to serve God 
in the world. 

Inward and outward — both ways the true 
door invites us. Protection and freedom; safety 
and struggle; worship and work; life enfolded 
in peace, and life enlarged in power — this is 
the twofold significance of the door. And this 
is what Christ means when he says to us, “I 
am the door: by me if any man enter in, he 
shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and 
find pasture.” 

How true it is; and yet how often we forget 
140 


THE OPEN DOOR 


it, how little we understand its full and glorious 
meaning ! Christ is the way into peace. By 
him we have access to the Father, forgiveness 
for our sins, reconciliation with God, deliver- 
ance from evil, security from death, comfort 
and rest, and the promise of everlasting life — 
how blessed is the entrance into these things 
through the grace of Jesus Christ ! It is like 
coming up from the wilderness where tempests 
rage and wild beasts are lurking and robbers 
seek their prey, at the close of day, when the 
shades of night are falling, and finding the door 
of the sheepfold open, and passing in to security 
and peace. Nothing can surpass the sweet 
repose of the heart when it takes refuge in 
Christ. 

“Jesus, lover of my soul , 

Let me to Thy bosom fly , 

While the billows near me roll , 

While the tempest still is high.” 

Nothing can ever change that message. Noth- 
ing can ever take its place. 

But this refuge, this restfulness, is not the 
whole of salvation. To be truly saved, thor- 
oughly saved, means something more than 
coming into security and peace. It means also 
going out to a richer, fuller life, a broader, 
deeper usefulness, a larger joy of noble work. 

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Full salvation is active as well as passive. It 
includes deliverance from danger and consecra- 
tion to duty. It ransoms the soul from sin in 
order to set it free for service. The soul that 
is saved, goes in to God and out to life; and 
everywhere, inward and outward, it finds 
through Christ what it needs — protection to 
safeguard it, rest to refresh it, pasture to 
strengthen it, work to discipline and unfold it. 
“I am come,” says Christ, “not only that they 
might not die, but that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly.” 

Christ’s two commands are “Come” and 
“Go” — invitation and liberation. As Phillips 
Brooks interprets it: discipleship, which sits at 
his feet to learn, and apostleship, which goes 
out into the world to work. 

“Come and see,” he says to Andrew and 
Philip and Nathaniel, come and see, that you 
may believe in me. And then “Go and tell 
John what things you have seen and heard,” 
that my grace may be known through you to 
all men. 

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” And 
then “Go work to-day in my vineyard. Go 
ye therefore, and teach all nations.” 

Let me speak for a few moments of Christ 
142 


THE OPEN DOOR 


as the living door through whom those who 
have entered into peace with God go out to a 
larger, freer, nobler life. 

I. Through Christ our thoughts go out into 
liberty. 

It is common to speak of the unbelief which 
rejects Christ and his teaching, and of the at- 
tempt to solve the mystery of life without reli- 
gion, as “free thought.” No name could be 
more false and misleading. The thought which 
refuses to go beyond the evidence of the senses; 
the thought which has no explanation for our 
deepest affections, our most ardent longings, 
our loftiest aspirations, except to say that they 
are dreams and illusions; the thought which 
has nothing to say about the origin of our spiri- 
tual nature and no answer to give to our burn- 
ing questions about the eternal future; the 
thought which knows no more of God 

“than sheep or goats , 

That nourish a blind life within the brain," 

is not free thought. It is captive thought, en- 
slaved thought, imprisoned thought. Christ 
opens a door in the blank wall with which un- 
belief would shut us in. He tells us that he 
comes from the spiritual world, and that he 
returns thither. He has seen it; he is sure of 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


its reality; he testifies of that which he has 
seen and speaks of that which he knows. He 
bids us trust our spiritual instincts even more 
than we trust our senses. He assures us that 
the hunger and thirst after righteousness is a 
prophecy that the soul shall be filled, that pur- 
ity of heart is a pledge that we shall see God. 
He does not give us a definition of God. Defini- 
tions are limitations. He gives us a vision of 
God. Vision is liberation. “Look out through 
me,” he says to us, “and you shall see the 
Father. For the Father is in me, and I in him. 
He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” 

What is it that we see in Christ? Holiness, 
and justice, and truth, and mercy, and kind- 
ness, and pity, and wisdom, and love. Through 
that door our thoughts go out to seek after 
God, not blindly, but with a Divine guidance. 
All that is holy, all that is true, all that is good, 
all that is spiritually lovely, belongs to God. 
It is but the broken image and reflection of 
the perfect light of his countenance revealed in 
Jesus Christ. Every gleam of glory that flashes 
upon our souls as we wander freely through 
the world of thought, like every ray of light 
that we see upon the breast of the moving 
waters beneath the stars, is an evidence and 
interpretation of the eternal light, which is God. 

144 


THE OPEN DOOR 


Take, for example, that one word in which 
Christ teaches us all to call God “our Father.” 
No dark prison of doubt can confine us, no 
forbidding walls of austere doctrine can shut 
us in, while we have that door by which our 
souls may go out. Who can question a father’s 
wisdom? Who can fathom a father’s love? 
Who can exhaust the resources of a father’s 
tenderness and care? 

What does fatherhood mean? I speak out 
the experience of an earthly fatherhood that 
has blessed my whole life. It means tender- 
ness, forbearance, watchfulness, firmness to 
counsel and rebuke, pity for my worst, sym- 
pathy for my best, a golden friendship, an un- 
dying love. If earthly fatherhood means all 
that, how much more does heavenly father- 
hood mean ! 

We come to Christ with our doubts and ques- 
tions and perplexities. He tells us that the 
great God, the sovereign Ruler of the universe, 
is our Father. Our questions are not all an- 
swered, but our way is open. Doubts may 
still shadow our path, but they cannot stay 
our steps. They are no longer a wall, but a 
mist, through which we press onward towards 
the light. 

Christ is the door of our faith. There is no 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


advance in religious knowledge except through 
him. There is no revision of creeds save that 
to which he leads. Without him there may 
be change. But the only possible improvement 
is to tune the music of our faith more closely 
to the keynote of his name. Every forward 
movement must be through Christ. 

His word is our chart, his spirit is our guide, 
his person is our star. Our motto is, “Not a 
new gospel , but more gospel .” Advance in the- 
ology through Christ, means the outgoing of 
the soul into life with God, with new experi- 
ences, new wonders, new glories unfolding every 
day. Beloved, now we know in part. But we 
know. And the door that opens before us into 
a wider, richer, truer knowledge of God, is Jesus 
Christ, who is the brightness of the Father’s 
glory and the express image of his person. 

II. Through Christ our affections and sym- 
pathies go out into liberty. 

The love of Christ is the type of all true and 
noble love because it does not narrow the heart, 
but expands it and makes it overflow with gen- 
erous feelings. Contrast him with the Scribes 
and Pharisees. Their doctrine was “Love thy- 
self well, and give what is left over to those 
who will pay for it.” Christ’s doctrine is “Love 
thy neighbour as thyself, and give freely be- 
cause thou hast freely received.” 

146 


THE OPEN DOOR 


He would have us love him first and most, 
because he is our Saviour, because he has given 
himself to us and for us. But he would have us 
love every one else better, because we love him 
best. 

Nothing in the world can so enlarge the heart 
and set its sympathies free to go out to all men 
as a true knowledge of Christ and a true devo- 
tion to him. When we enter through him into 
the secret of what real love means — when we 
learn from him that it is not getting but giving, 
and that the heart finds its deepest joy in be- 
stowing happiness upon others, then the door 
is open and we may go out and find pasture. 

Think how Christ lived in the world. How 
closely he was in touch with all sorts and con- 
ditions of men. How he understood the little 
children and rejoiced in their confidence. How 
he took part in all human joys and sorrows, 
from the wedding feast to the funeral. How 
he entered into the trials and conflicts, the per- 
plexities and aspirations, the weariness and the 
hope, of human nature everywhere. Whose 
thoughts did he not read? Whose wishes did 
he not fathom? Whose real needs did he not 
minister unto ? 

He draws each one of us in by sympathy 
with us, in order that our hearts may go out 
in sympathy with him. Through the lips of 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


that disciple whom he loved he says to us, 
“Love not the world” — the sensuous perishing 
order of existence which is separate from God 
— “neither the things that are in the world.” 
But the people that are in the world — the suffer- 
ing, struggling souls, enslaved by its evil, de- 
ceived by its follies, starved by its famine; all 
sorts of people that are weary and heavy laden; 
all sorts of people that are climbing upward 
and lending a hand to others; all sorts of peo- 
ple that need God’s love and ours, Jesus would 
have us love, even as he loves us. 

Faith in Christ rewrites the old motto. Not 
“ Liberty, equality, fraternity.” But first, fra- 
ternity, which lifts men into equality and so 
fits them for liberty. Faith in Christ makes 
us acknowledge brotherhood with all who are 
trying to cast out devils and heal the sick, 
whether they follow with us or not. Faith in 
Christ says, “He that is not against us is for 
us.” 

I have no confidence in that kind of Chris- 
tianity which will not join hands with an honest 
Hebrew to relieve suffering and enlighten ig- 
norance. I have no confidence in that kind of 
Protestantism which refuses to take hold of 
one end of the litter in which a wounded man 
is lying because a Roman Catholic has hold 
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THE OPEN DOOR 


of the other end. I have no confidence in that 
kind of Presbyterianism which lives in hostility 
and hatred toward Christians who have other 
creeds and forms of worship. I have no con- 
fidence in that kind of a church which resem- 
bles a private religious club, caring only for the 
comfort and respectability of its members, un- 
reasonably sure of its own salvation and un- 
reasonably indifferent to the salvation of the 
world. 

I believe in that Presbyterianism which is 
evangelical and evangelistic, which loves the 
old gospel so much that it cannot keep it to 
itself, and which has no rivalry with any other 
church except to try who can do the most good 
in the world. I believe in a church which goes 
out, through Christ and with Christ, to seek 
and to save the lost. I believe in a Christianity 
which is a giving, forgiving, sympathizing, 
sacrificing, self-forgetting, and happy life of 
ministry to the souls of others. And I believe 
that the perfection and everlasting continuance 
of that life is the joy of heaven. 

“Rejoice, we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive; 

A spark disturbs our clod — 

Nearer we held of God 

Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe .” 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


III. Through Christ our best activities, our 
noblest powers of effort and achievement, go 
out into liberty. 

Let us admit frankly that the Christian life 
has its restrictions, its limitations, its con- 
straints. It does cut a man off from some 
things which attract and tempt him. It does 
interpose a barrier between the heart and some 
of its desires. It involves sacrifice, resignation, 
giving up. There is a sense in which the ac- 
ceptance of Christ means the withdrawal from 
the old sphere of life, the entrance into a new 
and hidden sphere, the seclusion and separa- 
tion of the soul. 

But think for a moment on which side of our 
nature it cuts us off. Is it not the lower side, 
the baser side, the perishing side? What are 
the things that must be given up? What are 
the activities from which it withdraws us ? 
Selfish ambition, sensual lust, frivolous dissipa- 
tion, heartless conflict with our fellow-men, 
hopeless pursuit of empty pleasures, weary 
service of insatiable passions. These are ac- 
tivities, it is true, but they are activities of 
death, not of life. To be cut off from them is 
to be set free from them. It is not to enter a 
narrower life: it is to come in through Christ 
to a deeper, truer, quieter, happier life. 

150 


THE OPEN DOOR 


Tell me one thing that you would have to 
resign if you accepted Christ, and I will tell 
you that without that thing you would be far 
purer, stronger, happier, better fitted to live 
than you are to-day. If you give it up, if you 
leave it behind you and enter into salvation 
through Christ the door, you will find that 
same door open before you to activities that 
are unspeakably nobler, pleasures that are in- 
finitely more satisfying, and rewards that are 
immeasurably richer. 

For this is what Christ does for the man who 
comes in through him. He gives that man a 
new hope, a new inspiration, a new motive and 
power of effort, a new force of love and courage 
in all his faculties, and then sends him out again 
into the world to live and to work with all his 
energies. 

What good thing is there that Christ will not 
let you do if you take him as your master? 
Nay, what good thing is there that he does not 
want you to do, and to do it better, more 
earnestly, more thoroughly, for his sake? 

I am not speaking vaguely. I am talking to 
men and women whose lives, whose duties, 
whose perils, whose tasks, whose opportunities, 
here in this great city, I know. I say to you 
that whatever your real life and whatever your 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


right work may be, you will live it better, you 
will do it more honestly and more thoroughly, 
if you go out to it through the door which is 
opened to you by Jesus of Nazareth. 

Christ came into the world to sanctify all 
forms of honest human toil and all tasks of vital 
human effort. Christ came into the world not 
to separate men from life, but to bring true 
happiness into life. Christ came into the world 
to consecrate humanity to a holy priesthood, 
serving God in the ritual of the common life. 
The activities that mar and weaken and destroy 
humanity, he would check and crush out. The 
activities that develop true manhood and 
womanhood and make the world a better place 
to live in, he would encourage and enlarge. 
He came to break down the false distinction 
between the sacred and the secular. There is 
no clean and honest work in this world which 
may not be done in Christ’s name, and done 
a little better because the workman calls Jesus 
his Master. 

“ Every mason in the quarry , every builder on the shore , 

Every woodsman in the forest , every boatman at the oar , 

Hewing wood and drawing water , splitting stones and 
cleaving sod , 

All the dusty ranks of labour in the regiment of God , 

152 


THE OPEN DOOR 

March together toward his triumph , do the task his hands 
prepare; 

Honest tail is holy service, faithful work is praise and 
prayer 

But more than this — he calls each one of us 
to go out through him to a new and wonderful 
task. It is the task of transforming the king- 
doms of this world into the kingdom of our 
God and of his Christ; the task of drawing the 
world back from darkness and sin and sorrow 
to the love of the heavenly Father. 

This is the great object for which the Church 
exists. She is to bear witness to the truth, but 
it must always be an evangelistic witness, a mis- 
sionary witness. The first article in her com- 
mission is not to define, nor to organize, nor to 
build, nor to devise liturgies, but to preach the 
gospel to every creature. And this work must 
begin at home, in our own country, in order 
that it may overflow to every country in the 
world. A free church in a free state is the finest 
result of noble and enlightened politics. A 
preaching church in a listening land is the best 
product of religious freedom. A whole coun- 
try won for Christ is the greatest service that 
can crown the labours of a loyal and believing 
church. 

The Master calls us, my brethren, to go out, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


through him, to this glorious task. Every one 
of us, young and old, learned and unlearned, 
laymen and clergymen, women and children — 
every one of us may have a share in the work. 
There is something for every one to do. 

By the wayside, in a country where I often 
go to rest in the summer, there is a small, cool, 
crystal spring; and by the spring there is a 
little cup, hanging on the broken branch of a 
tree; and that silent cup says clearly that the 
water flows for every one who is thirsty and 
will stoop down to drink. By the spring of 
the water of everlasting life there is also a cup 
which tells the same story. But it is not for 
you alone. Not far away there is sure to be a 
little child waiting for you to give the cup of 
cold water in the Master’s name. 

There is a place in Christ’s army for every 
soul that belongs to him, and a spot on the 
battlefield where each soldier is needed. 

In a certain battle, not long ago, the officer 
of a battalion arrived late. Dashing up to his 
chief, he asked where he should lead his troops. 
“Go where you please,” was the answer, “there 
is good fighting all along the line.” 

Yes, there is good fighting all along the line 
for Christ ! In heathen lands and in our own 
land; in the university and in the market-place; 

154 


THE OPEN DOOR 


in society and on the frontier; in the home and 
in the mission school — all along the line thou- 
sands of places where loyal soldiers can do 
glorious service for Christ and their fellow- 
men. But you must go out to do it. 

You must not shut yourself up in your reli- 
gion as if it were a prison. You must issue 
forth from it as the home in which you have 
found peace for your heart, and strength for 
your work, and inspiration for your duty. 
Christ must be your door, by whom you go in 
to God and out to man. 

Come in, then, my friend, whose sins are un- 
forgiven, whose soul is unsatisfied, whose heart 
is heavy laden — come in, through Jesus, to 
pardon, peace, and rest. 

Go out, then, my friend, whose faith is still 
unproved by works, whose nature is still un- 
developed by service, whose life is still nar- 
rowed and imprisoned by self, go out, through 
Christ, to a broader, nobler, happier life than 
you have ever lived before: — 

“The freer step , the fuller breath. 

The wide horizon’s grander view. 

The sense of life that knows no death. 

The life that maketh all things new.” 


1 55 


VIII 

RESURRECTION NOW* 


u If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above , where 
Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” — Col. 3 : 1. 

"DESURRECTION is a great word. It has a 
A ^ power to stir the mind, a charm to quicken 
the imagination, and an attraction to draw the 
heart. What thoughtful person can repeat 
that sentence of the Creed which says of Christ, 
“the third day He rose again from the dead,” 
and then add that triumphant utterance of 
death-defying faith, “I believe in the resurrec- 
tion of the body,” without a great thrill of hope 
and joy ? 

But these two thoughts of resurrection do 
not exhaust its meaning. It is more than a 
sublime fact in the past. It is more than a 
glorious event in the futuire. It is an experi- 
ence in the present. It is happening to-day. 
At this very moment a new and eternal life is 
unfolding within human souls and transform- 
ing human bodies in fellowship with Christ. 
At this very moment men and women are 

* Baccalaureate sermon. University of Missouri, June 1, 1902. 

156 


RESURRECTION NOW 


passing from death unto life, from darkness 
to light, from the perishing to the imperish- 
able, by vital union with the spirit of Jesus. 

Here, then, is the great thought which the 
text flashes into our souls. There is a Resur- 
rection Now. There is a triumph over death 
for which we do not need to wait until the graves 
are opened. We may have it at once. There 
is a victory of life for which we do not need to 
look to some far-distant morning. We may 
feel it to-day. St. Paul felt it as he sat in his 
Roman prison, writing to his friends at Co- 
lossse. Worn, and feeble, and aged before his 
time, bound with chains, waiting for his trial 
before a cruel and bloody Caesar, St. Paul knew 
even then that he was a risen man. By faith 
in the things that are unseen and eternal he 
had already won the victory over the world. 
In prison he was free, in weakness he was strong, 
in chains he was cheerful, in exile he was exul- 
tant, in trouble he triumphed, and in the drear 
winter of old age his spirit was quickened with 
an immortal spring. Surely this is a veritable 
resurrection, and they who have entered into 
such an experience are risen indeed. 

But this risen life is under a law. Like all 
other forms of life it has a condition which must 
be fulfilled in order that the life may continue 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


to exist and expand. It is of this law of the 
risen life, it is of this condition under which 
alone Resurrection Now can become a real and 
abiding experience within us, that I wish to 
speak to you. 

The subject is important. If we can learn 
even now the secret of rising from the dead, 
there is no other knowledge worthy to be com- 
pared with this. And surely the subject is ap- 
propriate. It is the season when nature has put 
on a new life. All round us the visible emblems 
of vitality are unfolding. The old earth, after 
her long sleep in winter’s lap, stirs at the touch 
of summer, stretches her arms, smiles like a 
child waking at sunrise, and laughs with a thou- 
sand melodies of joy. How beautiful it all is ! 
How deeply it speaks to our longing hearts! 
It is the time of unfolding life in your experi- 
ence also. You are in the flood-tide of summer, 
my friends, and the time for the singing of birds 
has come. Youth means liberation, enlarge- 
ment, unfolding. To some of you this Com- 
mencement season brings a new period of ex- 
istence, as you step across the threshold of the 
university into the larger school of the world. 
To all of you I trust it brings new thoughts, 
new hopes, new purposes, new ideas of what it 
means to live. It is a privilege to speak to you, 
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RESURRECTION NOW 

and I should be glad indeed if I could make 
that privilege a power. A power it would be if 
your hearts would but receive this day, and 
keep for ever, the Law of Resurrection Now. 

“If ye then he risen with Christ , seek those 
things which are above, where Christ sitteth on 
the right hand of God." 

What does it mean to seek those things that 
are above? Where is it that Christ sitteth on 
the right hand of God? Surely not in some 
distant region, invisible and inaccessible to 
mortals. To read the law of the risen life thus 
would be to rob it of its meaning and its power 
for the present moment. God is not secluded 
in some far-off heaven. He is dwelling and 
working in this very world where we live. His 
“ right hand” is manifest in all his works of 
wisdom and righteousness and goodness and 
love. Christ sitteth on the right hand of his 
Father because he is exalted to share in all these 
glorious works, because he is the Mediator be- 
tween the divine and the human, because his 
spirit brings men into harmony with God and 
inspires the pure and holy thoughts, the just 
and noble deeds, the generous and blessed affec- 
tions that lift the world. He is not far away 
from us. He is with us always, even unto the 
end of the world. He sitteth close beside us, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


breaketh bread at our tables, walketh with us 
in the city streets and among the green fields 
and beside the sea. The ‘‘things that are 
above” are the things that belong to him and 
to his kingdom, the spiritual realities of a no- 
ble life, whatsoever things are pure and lovely 
and of good report. These are the things that 
we are to seek. We are to distinguish between 
the perishing and the imperishable. We are to 
choose in every action between the higher and 
the lower end. We are to cling to that which 
is fine and generous and true, and cut loose from 
that which is coarse and selfish and false. We 
are to turn away from that which drags us 
downward and makes us like the beasts, and 
follow after that which draws us upward to- 
wards the likeness of Christ. That is the law of 
Resurrection Now. Those who have risen must 
be ever rising. The resurrection life must be 
an upward life. 

Let us try to carry this law into some of the 
different spheres of our existence. Let us try 
to see how the things that are above mingle 
with the things that are beneath all through 
the world, and how our present life, by lofty 
choice, and by fellowship with Jesus, may be 
made a daily resurrection and ascension. 

I. Look first at the aspects of the natural 
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RESURRECTION NOW 


world in which we live. Are there not two sides 
here — a lower side and a higher — one which 
ministers to sense alone and another which 
ministers to spirit ? The procession of the 
seasons, the secret forces of chemistry and 
physics and biology, are working together for 
the supply of our bodily needs. They warm 
and feed and clothe us. But if we look only 
at this side of nature, if we regard this won- 
derful world only as our dormitory, our ward- 
robe, our feeding-trough, we are receiving from 
it only the least and lowest of its gifts. It has 
a nobler service to render to our souls, a revela- 
tion of wisdom and beauty, a message of joy 
and peace, a gift of spiritual instruction and 
comfort. Wordsworth was right when he 
said: — 

“One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man , 

Of moral evil , and of good , 

Than all the sages can .” 

When we look only at the sensuous side we may 
read nature as a grocer’s account book, but 
when we look at the spiritual side we begin to 
interpret nature as a divine poem. There are 
some people in the world, and very decent 
people too, to whom the returning summer 
cannot mean much more than it means to a 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


comfortable cow — a time of physical pleasure, 
when there are no more blizzards, and it is easy 
to move about, and there are plenty of green 
things to eat. But there are others to whom 
it means a blossoming of thankful thoughts, a 
rapture of gentle affections, a promise of new 
and immortal life. I once heard an English- 
man, looking down upon the glittering, mo- 
tionless billows of the Mer de Glace, remark 
that “all that ice would bring a lot of money 
in the hot season at Calcutta — don’t you 
know?” The poet Coleridge, in his Hymn 
before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni , hears 
those silent cataracts of frozen splendour sing- 
ing the eternal praise of God. It is always open 
to us to choose, my friends, whether we will 
fix our regards upon the lower or upon the 
higher side of nature. We have two pairs of 
eyes, one of the sense and one of the soul. The 
spiritual vision seeks the things that are above. 
To look up is to aspire. To aspire is to rise. 

“ The beauty to perceive of earthly things , 

The mounting soul must heavenward prune her wings” 

II. In the sphere of human intercourse we 
find the same division between the higher and 
the lower. There are two paths in love and 
friendship. One leads downward, with pride 
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RESURRECTION NOW 

and folly, selfishness and lust as guides, towards 
the earthly, the sensual, and at last the devilish. 
The other leads upward, with purity and 
honour, generosity and self-sacrifice as guides, 
towards the celestial, the ideal, the godlike. 
Love is a fire; sometimes it kindles a harbour 
light to guide the heart to peace; sometimes 
it kindles a false beacon to lure the heart to 
wreck. There is a friendship which saves, and 
there is a friendship which ruins. 

What are you seeking in human intercourse ? 
That is the crucial question. It is said that a 
man may be known by the company he keeps. 
Not always. He may be better known by the 
purpose with which he keeps it. The Pharisees 
kept company with respectable folk, and found 
dead men’s bones. Christ kept company with 
publicans and sinners, and found hidden trea- 
sure. 

If you are seeking in your fellow-men that 
which ministers to ambition or avarice or sen- 
suality, if you are trying to make friends sim- 
ply in order that they may help you to secure 
certain advantages in the world of wealth or 
fashion, if you are forming ties of intimacy 
whose chief attraction lies in their appeal to 
that which is selfish and greedy and base in 
your nature, then you are surely on the de- 
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scending path. But if you are looking for that 
which is best in the men and women with whom 
you come into contact; if you are seeking also 
to give them that which is best in yourself; 
if you are looking for a friendship which shall 
help you to know yourself as you are and to 
fulfill yourself as you ought to be; if you are 
looking for a love which shall not be a flatter- 
ing dream and a madness of desire, but a true 
comradeship and a mutual inspiration to all 
nobility of living, then you are surely on the 
ascending path. 

Men tell you that you must “know the 
world.” Yes, it is true, unless you are to be 
helpless babies all your lives, you must acquire 
some of this knowledge. But never suppose 
that it consists only or chiefly of a knowledge 
of evil. The world is not a pesthouse, nor is 
life a complication of diseases. The true physi- 
ology is a science of health. The deepest knowl- 
edge of human nature has for its guiding light 
the desire to discover that which is best in hu- 
manity. Study vices less and virtues more. 
Make your contribution to society as a believer 
in pure womanhood and worthy manhood, as 
an encourager of faith and hope and charity, 
as a leader and helper in the upward path, as 
a friend of true friendship, and a lover of noble 
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RESURRECTION NOW 

love. Do not waste your life in analyzing the 
pollutions of the social atmosphere, but bring 
into it the breath of a purer spirit. 

“Be a breeze from the mountain height; 

Be a fountain of pure delight ; 

Be a star serene. 

Shining clear and keen 
Through the darkness and dread of the night; 

Be something holy and helpful and bright , — 

Be the best that you can with all your might.** 

III. When we turn to the region of art and 
literature do we not find two paths here also? 
There is noble music which cleanses the heart 
like a tide from the sea, sweeping away all things 
that are low and base, filling it with high 
thoughts and generous desires. There is mean 
music that plays upon the strings of sensual 
passion and vulgar mirth, strumming and tin- 
kling a fit accompaniment to the reckless dance 
of ephemeral souls above the cataract of fatal 
folly, or beating a brutal march for the parade 
of pride and cruelty towards the pit of death. 
There are pictures that immortalize the great 
moments of history, the fine aspirations of hu- 
manity, the fair scenes of nature. There are 
pictures that lavish all the resources of the 
most consummate art to perpetuate the trivial 
and the vile. There are dramas that speak of 
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heroism and virtue, and purify our hearts with 
pity, fear, and love. There are plays that pre- 
sent life as a coarse and tedious farce, or glorify 
indecency and unfaithfulness, or make a bitter 
jest of the impotence of all goodness and the 
tragic failure of all high aims. There are books 
which store the memory with beautiful images 
and gentle pleasures and fine ideals. There 
are books which leave a bad taste in the mind, 
and weaken every fiber of spiritual courage, 
and poison the springs of imagination at the 
fountain-head. It is for us to choose in which 
of these two paths of art we will walk. It is 
for us to choose whether we will have for our 
companions the poets like Shakespeare and 
Milton, Wordsworth and Tennyson, who reveal 
human nature in the light of duty and courage 
and hope, or the writers like Byron and Swin- 
burne, Baudelaire and de Musset, who flatter 
sensual passion and darken spiritual faith. The 
choice determines our destiny. Our intellec- 
tual nature is like the chameleon; it takes colour 
from that on which it feeds. Tell me what 
music you love, what dramas are your favour- 
ites, what books you read when you are alone, 
and I will tell you which way you are moving, 
upward or downward. 

IV. Look now for a moment at the great 
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RESURRECTION NOW 


common sphere of human labour, and see how 
the two sides of life are contrasted here. In 
one aspect, all the varied toil of mankind is 
only the mass of separate efforts by which each 
individual earns daily bread and amasses wealth, 
little or much. He who thinks of it merely in 
this aspect, drops into it as a mechanical rou- 
tine, plods along in it like a horse in a treadmill, 
now resolutely, now wearily. The only possible 
result of all his toil is what he can get out of it 
for himself. And that is limited by his capacity 
for eating and drinking and putting on of rai- 
ment. The sting of actual hunger and thirst 
and discomfort is a stimulus up to a certain 
point. But once beyond that point, there is 
nothing to animate endeavour except certain 
preferences for rich and unwholesome food in- 
stead of plain and wholesome food, and for 
costly and inconvenient clothing instead of 
simple and convenient clothing, and perhaps 
a strange desire to heap up money merely for 
the sake of possession. The human being who 
looks on labour from that side is certainly seek- 
ing the things that are beneath. 

But there is another way of regarding the 
toil of life. It is a divine task laid upon man- 
kind by the Creator for the conquest and culti- 
vation of the natural world. Human labour 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


is a vast confederation against want and bar- 
barism on behalf of civilization — a co-operation 
for the emancipation of mankind from the crush- 
ing pressure of physical necessities in order that 
the intellectual and spiritual powers of man 
may be unfolded. Toil itself, performed in this 
spirit, is a discipline for the soul, a medicine 
for sloth and vice, a teacher of self-restraint, 
patience, and courage. When we begin to per- 
ceive these things we see a new meaning in our 
work, whatever it may be. We can put heart 
into it, and be proud and glad of doing it well. 
We can lift it above its conditions by seeking 
the things that are above it. We can make it 
a vocation; a mission; a secret, divine enter- 
prise. 

V. Yes, my friends, this division between 
the things that are above and the things that 
are beneath runs through our whole life. Even 
religion has a higher side and a lower side, and 
upon our choice between these two sides de- 
pends the influence which religion is to have 
upon our destiny. There is a type of religion 
which consists chiefly of abstract doctrines 
embodied in a system, and another which con- 
sists chiefly of outward ceremonies arranged in 
a ritual. In one case all the stress is laid upon 
the correct statement of these doctrines; in the 
168 


RESURRECTION NOW 


other case the emphasis falls upon the punctual 
performance of these ceremonies. When the 
system is subscribed, when the ritual is ob- 
served, all is done that is necessary for salva- 
tion. 

Far be it from me to say that creeds are use- 
less. They are as essential to theology as gram- 
mars are to literature. Nor do I dream that 
there can ever be a church without some forms 
of worship. They are as needful as tactics are 
to an army. But when we mistake these things 
for the reality of religion, when we rest in them 
and repose upon them as sufficient to insure 
our personal salvation, then we forget to seek 
the things that are above. Inevitably such a 
religion must become a sensuous, selfish, sink- 
ing religion. 

Far above it shines that blessed state of daily 
dependence upon God and intercourse with 
him, of real fellowship with Christ and likeness 
to him, of constant service and sacrifice for our 
fellow-men, in which alone pure and undefiled 
religion is found. That is what we are to seek 
just because it is above us. We are not to be 
satisfied with our poor little orthodoxies or 
our vain little heresies. We are not to make 
puppets of ourselves in our tiny rituals, and 
content our souls with the smell of incense or 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

the singing of psalms. We are not to settle 
down comfortably in the conviction that we 
are to be saved and raised from the dead at 
the last day. We are to look and long and 
struggle upward, we are to rise with Christ 
now towards the things that are above. 

Will you take a motto for your spiritual life ? 
It is not an inscription for your tombstone: 
“ Resurgam, I shall arise, when earthly life is 
over, when the graves unclose.” It is a watch- 
word for your hearts: “ Resurgo , I arise, I am 
delivered, I am quickened, I begin to live up- 
ward, through Christ, for Christ, unto Christ.” 


170 


IX 

JOY AND POWER* 

If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them ** — St. John 13 : 17. 


J ASK you to think for a little while about the 
religion of Christ in its relation to happiness. 

This is only one point in the circle of truth 
at the centre of which Jesus stands. But it is 
an important point because it marks one of 
the lines of power which radiate from him. To 
look at it clearly and steadily is not to disre- 
gard other truths. The mariner takes the whole 
heavens of astronomy for granted while he 
shapes his course by a single star. 

In the wish for happiness all men are 
strangely alike. In their explanations of it 
and in their ways of seeking it they are sin- 
gularly different. Shall we think of this wish 
as right, or wrong; as a true star, or a will- 
o’-the-wisp ? If it is right to wish to be happy, 
what are the conditions on which the fulfill- 
ment of this wish depends ? These are the two 
questions with which I would come to Christ, 
seeking instruction and guidance. 

* Moderator’s sermon. One Hundred and Fifteenth General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church, Los Angeles, 1903. 

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I. The desire of happiness, beyond all doubt, 
is a natural desire. It is the law of life itself 
that every being seeks and strives towards the 
perfection of its kind, the realization of its own 
specific ideal in form and function, and a true 
harmony with its environment. Every drop 
of sap in the tree flows towards foliage and 
fruit. Every drop of blood in the bird beats 
towards flight and song. In a conscious being 
this movement towards perfection must take 
a conscious form. This conscious form is hap- 
piness, — the satisfaction of the vital impulse, — 
the rhythm of the inward life, — the melody of 
a heart that has found its keynote. To say 
that all men long for this is simply to confess 
that all men are human, and that their thoughts 
and feelings are an essential part of their life. 
Virtue means a completed manhood. The joy- 
ful welfare of the soul belongs to the fullness of 
that ideal. Holiness is wholeness. In striving 
to realize the true aim of our being, we find the 
wish for happiness implanted in the very heart 
of our effort. 

Now what does Christ say in regard to this 
natural human wish? Does he say that it is 
an illusion? Does he condemn and deny it? 
Would he have accepted Goethe’s definition: 
“Religion is renunciation”? 

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JOY AND POWER 


Surely such a notion is far from the spirit 
of Jesus. There is nothing of the hardness of 
Stoicism, the coldness of Buddhism, in Christ’s 
gospel. It is humane, sympathetic, consoling. 
Unrest and weariness, the fever of passion and 
the chill of despair, soul-solitude and heart- 
trouble, are the very things that he comes to 
cure. He begins his great discourse with a 
series of beatitudes. “Blessed” is the word. 
“Happy” is the meaning. Nine times he rings 
the changes on that word, like a silver bell 
sounding from his fair temple on the moun- 
tain-side, calling all who long for happiness to 
come to him and find rest for their souls. 

Christ never asks us to give up merely for 
the sake of giving up, but always in order to 
win something better. He comes not to de- 
stroy, but to fulfill, — to fill full, — to replenish 
life with true, inward, lasting riches. His gos- 
pel is a message of satisfaction, of attainment, 
of felicity. Its voice is not a sigh, but a song. 
Its final word is a benediction, a good-saying. 
“These things have I spoken unto you, that 
my joy might remain in you, and that your 
joy might be full.” 

If we accept his teaching we must believe 
that men are not wrong in wishing for happi- 
ness, but wrong in their way of seeking it. 

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Earthly happiness , — pleasure that belongs to the 
senses and perishes with them, — earthly hap- 
piness is a dream and a delusion. But happiness 
on earth , — spiritual joy and peace, blossoming 
here, fruiting hereafter, — immortal happiness, 
is the keynote of life in Christ. 

And if we come to him, he tells us four great 
secrets in regard to it. 

i. It is inward, and not outward; and so 
it does not depend on what we have, but on 
what we are. 

ii. It cannot be found by direct seeking, but 
by setting our faces towards the things from 
which it flows; and so we must climb the mount 
if we would see the vision, we must tune the 
instrument if we would hear the music. 

Hi. It is not solitary, but social; and so we 
can never have it without sharing it with others. 

iv. It is the result of God’s will for us, and 
not of our will for ourselves; and so we can 
only find it by giving our lives up, in submis- 
sion and obedience, to the control of God. 

“For this is peace, — to lose the lonely note 
Of self in love’s celestial ordered strain : 

And this is joy , — to find one’s self again 
In him whose harmonies forever float 
Through all the spheres of song , below , above , — 

For God is music , even as God is love.” 

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JOY AND POWER 


This is the divine doctrine of happiness as 
Christ taught it by his life and with his lips. 
If we want to put it into a single phrase, I know 
not where we shall find a more perfect utter- 
ance than in the words which have been taught 
us in childhood, — words so strong, so noble, 
so cheerful, that they summon the heart of 
manhood like marching-music: “ Man’s chief 
end is to glorify God and enjoy him for- 
ever.” 

Let us accept without reserve this teaching 
of our Divine Lord and Master in regard to 
the possibility and the duty of happiness. It 
is an essential element of his gospel. The at- 
mosphere of the New Testament is not gloom, 
but gladness; not despondency, but hope. The 
man who is not glad to be a Christian is not 
the best kind of a Christian. 

The first thing that commended the Church 
of Jesus to the weary and disheartened world 
in the early years of her triumph was her power 
to make her children happy, — happy in the 
midst of afflictions, happy in the release from 
the burden of guilt, happy in the sense of Divine 
Fatherhood and human brotherhood, happy 
in Christ’s victory over sin and death, happy 
in the assurance of an endless life. At mid- 
night in the prison, Paul and Silas sang praises, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and the prisoners heard them. The lateral 
force of joy, — that was the power of the Church. 

“‘Poor world , 9 she cried , ( so deep accurst , 

Thou runn 9 st from pole to pole 
To seek a draught to slake thy thirsty — 

Go seek it in thy soul 9 


Tears washed the trouble from her face! 

She changed into a child! 

9 Mid weeds and wrecks she stood, — a place 
Of ruin , — but she smiled 1" 

Much has the Church lost of that pristine and 
powerful joy. The furnace of civilization has 
withered and hardened her. She has become 
anxious and troubled about many things. She 
has sought earthly honours, earthly powers. 
Richer she is than ever before, and probably 
better organized, and perhaps more intelligent, 
more learned, — but not more happy. The one 
note that is most often missing in Christian 
life, in Christian service, is the note of spon- 
taneous joy. 

Christians are not as much calmer, steadier, 
stronger, and more cheerful than other people 
as they ought to be. Some Christians are 
among the most depressing and worryful people 
in the world, — the most difficult to live with. 
176 


JOY AND POWER 


And some, indeed, have adopted a theory of 
spiritual ethics which puts a special value upon 
unhappiness. The dark, morbid spirit which 
mistrusts every joyful feeling, and depreciates 
every cheerful virtue, and looks askance upon 
every happy life as if there must be something 
wrong about it, is a departure from the beauty 
of Christ’s teaching to follow the dark-browed 
philosophy of the Orient. 

The religion of Jesus tells us that cheerful 
piety is the best piety. There is something 
finer than to do right against inclination, and 
that is to have an inclination to do right. There 
is something nobler than reluctant obedience, 
and that is joyful obedience. The rank of vir- 
tue is not measured by its disagreeableness, but 
by its sweetness to the heart that loves it. The 
real test of character is joy. For what you re- 
joice in, that you love. And what you love, 
that you are like. 

I confess frankly that I have no admiration 
for the phrase 6 ‘disinterested benevolence,” to 
describe the mainspring of Christian morals. I 
do not find it in the New Testament, — neither 
the words nor the thing. Interested benevolence 
is what I find there. To do good to others is 
to make life interesting and find peace for our 
own souls. To glorify God is to enjoy him. 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


That was the spirit of the first Christians. Was 
not St. Paul a happier man than Herod? Did 
not St. Peter have more joy of his life than 
Nero ? It is said of the first disciples that they 
“did eat their meat with gladness and single- 
ness of heart.” Not till that pristine gladness 
of life returns will the Church regain her early 
charm for the souls of men. Every great re- 
vival of Christian power — like those which 
came in the times of St. Francis of Assisi and 
of John Wesley — has been marked and heralded 
by a revival of Christian joy. 

If we want the Church to be mighty in power 
to win men, to be a source of light in the dark- 
ness, a fountain of life in the wilderness, we 
must remember and renew, in the spirit of 
Christ, the relation of religion to human happi- 
ness. 

II. What, then, are the conditions upon 
which true happiness depends? Christ tells 
us in the text: If ye know these things , happy 
are ye if ye do them . 

This is the blessing with a double if. “If 
ye know,” — this is the knowledge which Christ 
gives to faith. “If ye do,” — this is the obe- 
dience which faith gives to Christ. Knowing 
and Doing, — these are the twin pillars on which 
the house of happiness is built. The harmony 
178 


JOY AND POWER 


of faith and life, — this is the secret of inward 
joy and power. 

You remember when these words were 
spoken. Christ had knelt to wash the disciples’ 
feet. Peter, in penitence and self-reproach, 
had hesitated to permit this lowly service of 
Divine love. But Christ answered by reveal- 
ing the meaning of his act as a symbol of the 
cleansing of the soul from sin. He reminded 
the disciples of what they knew by faith, — 
that he was their Saviour and their Lord. By 
deed and by word he called up before them the 
great spiritual truths which had given new 
meaning to their life. He summoned them to 
live according to their knowledge, to act upon 
the truth which they believed. 

I am sure that his words sweep out beyond 
that quiet upper room, beyond that beautiful 
incident, to embrace the whole spiritual life. 
I am sure that he is revealing to us the secret 
of happy living which lies at the very heart of 
his gospel when he says : If ye know these things > 
hajpjpy are ye if ye do them . 

i . “If ye know,” — there is, then, a certain 
kind of knowledge without which we cannot 
be happy. There are questions arising in hu- 
man nature which demand an answer. If it 
is denied we cannot help being disappointed, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


restless, and sad. This is the price we have 
to pay for being conscious, rational creatures. 
If we were mere plants or animals we might 
go on living through our appointed years in 
complete indifference to the origin and mean- 
ing of our existence. But within us, as human 
beings, there is something that cries out and 
rebels against such a blind life. Man is born 
to ask what things mean. He is possessed with 
the idea that there is a significance in the world 
beyond that which meets his senses. 

John Fiske has brought out this fact very 
clearly in his last book, Through Nature to 
God . He shows that “in the morning twi- 
light of existence the Human Soul vaguely 
reached forth towards something akin to it- 
self, not in the realm of fleeting phenomena, 
but in the Eternal Presence beyond.” He 
argues by the analogy of evolution, which al- 
ways presupposes a real relation between the 
life and the environment to which it adjusts 
itself, that this forth-reaching and unfolding 
of the soul implies the everlasting reality of 
religion. 

The argument is good. But the point which 
concerns us now is simply this: The forth- 
reaching, questioning soul can never be satis- 
fied if it touches only a dead wall in the dark- 
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JOY AND POWER 


ness, if its seeking meets with the reply, “You 
do not know, and you never can know, and 
you must not try to know.” This is agnosti- 
cism. It is only another way of spelling unhap- 
piness. 

“Since Christianity is not true,” wrote Ernest 
Renan, “nothing interests me, or appears 
worthy my attention.” That is the logical re- 
sult of losing the knowledge of spiritual things, 
— a life without real interest, without deep 
worth, — a life with a broken spring. 

But suppose Renan is mistaken. Suppose 
Christianity is true. Then the first thing that 
makes it precious is that it answers our ques- 
tions, and tells us the things that we must know 
in order to be happy. 

Christianity is a revealing religion, a teach- 
ing religion, a religion which conveys to the 
inquiring spirit certain great and positive solu- 
tions of the problems of life. It is not silent, 
nor ambiguous, nor incomprehensible in its 
utterance. It replies to our questions with a 
knowledge which, though limited, is definite 
and sufficient. It tells us that this “order of 
nature, which constitutes the world’s experi- 
ence, is only one portion of the total universe.” 
That the ruler of both worlds, seen and unseen, 
is God, a Spirit, and the Father of our spirits. 

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That he is not distant from us nor indifferent 
to us, but that he has given his eternal Son 
Jesus Christ to be our Saviour. That his Spirit 
is ever present with us to help us in our con- 
flicts with evil, in our efforts towards goodness. 
That he is making all things work together for 
good to those that love him. That through 
the sacrifice of Christ every one who will may 
obtain the forgiveness of sins and everlasting 
peace. That through the resurrection of Christ 
all who love him and their fellow-men shall 
obtain the victory over death and live for ever. 

Now these are doctrines. And it is just be- 
cause Christianity contains such doctrines that 
it satisfies the need of man. 

“The first and the most essential condition 
of true happiness,” writes Professor Carl Hilty, 
the eminent Swiss jurist, “is a firm faith in the 
moral order of the world. What is the happy 
life ? It is a life of conscious harmony with this 
Divine order of the world, a sense, that is to 
say, of God’s companionship. And wherein is 
the profoundest unhappiness ? It is in the sense 
of remoteness from God, issuing into incurable 
restlessness of heart, and finally into incapacity 
to make one’s life fruitful or effective.” 

What shall we say, then, of the proposal to 
adapt Christianity to the needs of the world 
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JOY AND POWER 


to-day by eliminating or ignoring its charac- 
teristic doctrines? You might as well propose 
to fit a ship for service by taking out its com- 
pass and its charts and cutting off its rudder. 
Make Christianity silent in regard to these 
great questions of spiritual existence, and you 
destroy its power to satisfy the heart. 

What would the fife of Christ mean if these 
deep truths on which he rested and from which 
he drew his strength, were uncertain or illusory ? 
It would be the most pathetic, mournful, heart- 
breaking of all phantoms. 

What consoling, cheering power would be 
left in the words of Jesus if his doctrine were 
blotted out and his precept left to stand alone ? 
Try the experiment, if it may be done without 
irreverence: read his familiar discourses in the 
shadow of agnosticism. 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is 
a hopeless poverty. Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they know not whether they shall see 
God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile 
you and persecute you, for ye have no promise 
of a heavenly reward. 

“Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast 
shut the door, keep silence, for thou canst not 
tell whether there is One to hear thy voice in 
secret. Take no thought for the morrow, for 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


thou knowest not whether there is a Father 
who careth for thee. 

“God is unknown, and they that worship 
him must worship him in ignorance and doubt. 
No man hath ascended up into heaven, neither 
hath any man come down from heaven, for the 
Son of Man hath never been in heaven. That 
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
is born of the spirit is a dream. Man shall not 
live by bread alone, neither shall he listen for 
any word from the mouth of God. I proceeded 
forth and came from darkness, I came of my- 
self, I know not who sent me. My sheep hear 
my voice, and I know them, and they follow 
me, but I cannot give unto them eternal life, 
for they shall perish and death shall pluck them 
out of my hand. Let not your heart be troubled ; 
ye believe not in God, ye need not believe in 
me. Keep my commandments, and I will not 
pray for you, and ye shall abide without a Com- 
forter. In the world ye shall have tribulation, 
but be of good cheer, for ye know not whether 
there is a world to come. I came forth from 
darkness into the world, and again I leave the 
world and return to darkness. Peace I leave 
with you. If ye loved me ye would rejoice be- 
cause I said, I go into darkness, and where I 
am there shall ye be also.” 

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JOY AND POWER 


Is it conceivable that any suffering, sorrow- 
ing human soul should be comforted and 
strengthened by such a message as this ? Could 
it possibly be called a gospel, glad tidings of 
great joy to all people ? 

And yet what has been omitted or changed 
here in the words of Christ ? Nothing but what 
men call doctrines: the personality of God, the 
divinity of Christ, the Atonement, the presence 
and power of the Holy Spirit, the sovereignty 
of the Heavenly Father, the truth of the divine 
revelation, the reality of the heavenly world, 
the assurance of immortal life. But it is just 
from these doctrines that the teaching of Jesus 
draws its peculiar power to comfort and in- 
spire. They are the rays of light which dis- 
perse the gloom of uncertainty. They are the 
tones of celestial music which fill the heart of 
man with good cheer. 

Let us never imagine that we can strengthen 
Christianity by leaving out the great doctrines 
which have given it life and power. Faith is 
not a mere matter of feeling. It is the accep- 
tance of truth in regard to God and the world, 
Christ and the soul, duty and immortality. The 
first appeal to faith lies in the clearness and 
vividness, the simplicity and joy, with which 
this truth is presented. 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


There has not been too much preaching of 
doctrine in this age — there has been too little. 
And what there has been, has been too dull 
and cold and formal, too vague and misty, too 
wavering and uncertain. 

What the world wants and waits for to-day 
is a strong, true, vital preaching of doctrine. 
The Church must realize anew the precious 
value of the truths which Christ has given her. 
She must not conceal them or cast them away; 
she must bring them out into the light, press 
them home upon the minds and hearts of men. 
She must simplify her statement of them, so 
that men can understand what they mean. 
She must not be content with repeating them 
in the language of past centuries. She must 
translate them into the language of to-day. 
First century texts will never wear out because 
they are inspired. But seventeenth century 
sermons grow obsolete because they are not in- 
spired. Texts from the Word of God, preach- 
ing in the words of living men, — that is what we 
need. 

We must think about the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity more earnestly and profoundly. We 
must renew our Christian evidences, as an army 
fits itself with new weapons. The old-fash- 
ioned form of the “ argument from design in 
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JOY AND POWER 


nature” has gone out with the old-fashioned 
books of science which it used. But there is a 
new and more wonderful proof of God’s presence 
in the world, — the argument from moral ends 
in evolution. Every real advance of science 
makes the intelligent order of the universe more 
sublimely clear. Every century of human ex- 
perience confirms the Divine claims and adds 
to the Divine triumphs of Jesus Christ. Social 
progress has followed the lines of his gospel; 
and he lays his hand to-day with heavenly wis- 
dom on the social wants that still trouble us, 
“the social lies that warp us from the living 
truth.” Christ’s view of life and the world is 
as full of sweet reasonableness now as it was 
in the first century. Every moral step that 
man has taken upward has brought a wider, 
clearer vision of his need of such a religion as 
that which Christ teaches. 

Let not the Church falter and blush for her 
doctrines. Let her not turn and go down the 
hill of knowledge to defend her position in the 
valley of ignorance. Let her go up the hill, 
welcoming every wider outlook, rejoicing in 
every new discovery, gathering fresh evidences 
of the truths which man must believe concern- 
ing God and new motives to the duties which 
God requires of man. 


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But in doing this we must put the emphasis 
of our preaching to-day where it belongs, where 
Christ puts it, on the doctrines that are most 
important to human life and happiness. We 
can afford to let the fine metaphysical distinc- 
tions of theology rest for a while, and throw all 
our force on the central, fundamental truths 
which give steadiness and courage and cheer 
to the heart of man. I will not admit that it 
makes no difference to a man of this age whether 
or not he believes in the personal God and the 
Divine Christ. If he really believes, it makes 
all the difference between spiritual strength and 
spiritual weakness, between optimism and pes- 
simism. I will not admit that it makes no dif- 
ference to a learned scholar or a simple labourer 
to-day whether he accepts or ignores the doc- 
trine of the atonement, the doctrine of personal 
immortality. If he knows that Christ died for 
him, that there is a future beyond the grave, 
it makes all the difference between despair and 
hope, between misery and consolation, between 
the helpless frailty of a being that is puffed 
out like a candle, and the joyful power of an 
endless life. 

My brethren, we must work and pray for a 
true revival of Christian doctrine in our age. 
We must deepen our own hold upon the truths 
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which Christ has taught us. We must preach 
them more simply, more confidently, more 
reasonably, more earnestly. We must draw 
from them the happiness and the help, the 
comfort and the inspiration, that they have to 
give to the souls of men. But most of all, we 
must keep them in close and living touch with 
the problems of daily duty and experience. For 
no doctrine, however high, however true, can 
make men happy until it is translated into life. 

ii. Here is the second if, on which the power 
of religion to confer happiness depends: If ye 
know, happy are ye if ye do these things . 

Between the knowing and the doing there is 
a deep gulf. Into that abyss the happiness of 
many a man slips, and is lost. There is no peace, 
no real and lasting felicity, for a human life 
until the gulf is closed, and the continent of 
conduct meets the continent of creed, edge to 
edge, lip to lip, firmly joined for ever. 

It is not a blessing to know the things that 
Christ teaches, and then go on living as if they 
were false or doubtful. It is a trouble, a tor- 
ment, a secret misery. To know that God is 
our Father, and yet to withhold our love and 
service from him; to know that Christ died 
for us, and yet to deny him and refuse to follow 
him; to know that there is an immortal life, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and yet to waste and lose our souls in the pur- 
suit of sensual pleasure and such small portion 
of the world as we may hope to gain, — surely 
that is the deepest of all unhappiness. 

But the right kind of knowing carries in its 
heart the doing of the truth. And the right 
kind of doing leads to a fuller and happier know- 
ing. “If any man will do God’s will,” declares 
Christ, “he shall know of the doctrine.” 

Let a man take the truth of the Divine 
Fatherhood and begin to conform his life to 
its meaning. Let him give up his anxious wor- 
ryings, his murmurings, his complainings, and 
trust himself completely to his Father’s care. 
Let him do his work from day to day as well 
as he can and leave the results to God. Let 
him come to his Father every day and confess 
his faults and ask for help and guidance. Let 
him try to obey and please God for love’s sake. 
Let him take refuge from the trials and con- 
fusions and misunderstandings of the world, 
from the wrath of men and the strife of tongues, 
in the secret of his Father’s presence. Surely 
if he learns the truth thus, by doing it, he will 
find happiness. 

Or take the truth of immortality. Let a man 
live now in the light of the knowledge that he 
is to live for ever. How it will deepen and 
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JOY AND POWER 

strengthen the meaning of his existence, lift him 
above petty cares and ambitions, and make the 
things that are worth while precious to his heart ! 
Let him really set his affections on the spiritual 
side of life, let him endure afflictions patiently 
because he knows that they are but for a mo- 
ment, let him think more of the soul than of 
the body, let him do good to his fellow-men in 
order to make them sharers of his immortal 
hope, let him purify his love and friendship 
that they may be fit for the heavenly life. 
Surely the man who does these things will be 
happy. It will be with him as with Lazarus, 
in Robert Browning’s poem. The Epistle of 
Karshish. Others will look at him with won- 
der and say: 

“ Whence has the man the halm that brightens all? 

This grown man eyes the world now like a child” 

Yes, my brethren, this is the sure result of fol- 
lowing out the doctrines of Christ in action, of 
living the truths that he teaches, — a simple 
life, a childlike life, a happy life. And this also 
the Church needs to-day, as well as a true re- 
vival of doctrine. 

A revival of simplicity, a revival of sincerity, 
a revival of work: this will restore unto us the 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


joy of salvation. And with the joy of salva- 
tion will come a renewal and expansion of power. 

The inconsistency of Christians is the strong- 
hold of unbelief. The lack of vital joy in the 
Church is the chief cause of indifference in the 
world. The feeble energy, the faltering and re- 
luctant spirit, the weariness in well-doing with 
which too many believers impoverish and sad- 
den their own hearts, make other men question 
the reality and value of religion and turn away 
from it in cool neglect. 

What, then, is the duty of the Church ? 
What must she do to win the confidence of the 
world ? What is the best way for her to “prove 
her doctrine all divine” ? 

First, she must increase her labours in the 
love of men; second, she must practise the 
simple life, deepening her trust in God. 

Suppose that a fresh flood of energy, brave, 
cheerful, joyous energy, should be poured into 
all the forms of Christian work. Suppose that 
Foreign Missions and Home Missions should 
no longer have to plead and beg for support, 
but that plenty of money should come flowing 
in to send out every missionary that wants to 
go, and that plenty of the strongest and best 
young men should dedicate their lives to the 
ministry of Christ, and that every household 
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JOY AND POWER 


where his gospel is believed should find its high- 
est honour and its greatest joy in helping to 
extend his kingdom. 

And then suppose that the Christian life, in 
its daily manifestation, should come to be 
marked and known by simplicity and happi- 
ness. Suppose that the followers of Jesus should 
really escape from bondage to the evil spirits 
of avarice and luxury which infect and torment 
so much of our complicated, tangled, artificial, 
modern life. Suppose that instead of increas- 
ing their wants and their desires, instead of 
loading themselves down on life’s journey with 
so many bags and parcels and boxes of super- 
fluous luggage and bric-a-brac that they are 
forced to sit down by the roadside and gasp 
for breath, instead of wearing themselves out 
in the dusty ways of ostentation and vain show 
or embittering their hearts because they can- 
not succeed in getting into the weary race of 
wealth and fashion, — suppose instead of all 
this, they should turn to quiet ways, lowly 
pleasures, pure and simple joys, “plain living 
and high thinking.” Suppose they should truly 
find and show their happiness in the knowledge 
that God loves them and Christ died for them 
and heaven is sure, and so set their hearts free 
to rejoice in life’s common mercies, the light of 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


the sun, the blue of the sky, the splendour of 
the sea, the peace of the everlasting hills, the 
song of birds, the sweetness of flowers, the 
wholesome savour of good food, the delights of 
action and motion, the refreshment of sleep, 
the charm of music, the blessings of human 
love and friendship, — rejoice in all these with- 
out fear or misgiving, because they come from 
God and because Christ has sanctified them all 
by his presence and touch. 

Suppose, I say, that such a revival of the 
joy of living in Christ and working for Christ 
should silently sweep over the Church in the 
Twentieth Century. What would happen ? 
Great would be the peace of her children. 
Greater still would be their power. 

This is the message which I have to bring 
to you, my brethren, in this General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church. You may wonder 
that it is not more distinctive, more ecclesiasti- 
cal, more specially adapted to the peculiarities 
of our own denomination. You may think that 
it is a message which could just as well be 
brought to any other Church on any other occa- 
sion. With all my heart I hope that is true. 
The things that I care for most in our Church 
are not those which divide us from other Chris- 
tians, but those which unite us to them. The 
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JOY AND POWER 


things that I love most in Christianity are those 
which give it power to save and satisfy, to 
console and cheer, to inspire and bless human 
hearts and lives. The thing that I desire most 
for Presbyterianism is that it should prove its 
mission and extend its influence in the world 
by making men happy in the knowing and the 
doing of the things which Christ teaches. 

The Church that the Twentieth Century will 
hear most gladly and honour most sincerely 
will have two marks. It will be the Church 
that teaches most clearly and strongly the truths 
that Jesus taught. It will be the Church that 
finds most happiness in living the simple life 
and doing good in the world. 


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ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 

And he went out, not knowing whither he went.” — Heb. 11:8. 


^PHIS text describes a life of adventure. It 
A brings before us one of that noble com- 
pany of explorers who forsake the beaten track 
and push out into a new, strange, uncertain 
course for the sake of discovering and possessing 
a new w r orld. 

These men always appear heroic. There is 
something in them which compels our admira- 
tion. There is something in us which responds 
to their daring, and follows their journeyings 
with eager interest. I suppose it is the old, 
migratory instinct, — the instinct which first 
drew the tribes of men out from their original 
homes, and peopled the distant regions of the 
earth, — it is this deep, curious impulse of wan- 
dering and discovery which still lingers in our 
nature, and stirs us with strange thrills of enthu- 
siasm, and fills us with wild day-dreams of ad- 
venture as we read or hear the story of some 
famous traveller in unknown lands. There is 
196 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


an explorer latent in almost every man whose 
mind is large enough to have any interests out- 
side of himself; and it is this unused and frus- 
trated explorer who sits beside the fire and 
pores, entranced and fascinated, over the Arc- 
tic diaries of Dr. Kane or the African journals 
of Stanley. He recognizes and applauds the 
heroism of these men, who went out, not know- 
ing whither they went. 

The power which has moved adventurers is 
faith. This is the vital force of almost all the 
great explorers. They have not gone forth 
vaguely and aimlessly to wander to and fro 
upon the face of the earth. They have believed 
in something unseen, something that other men 
have not believed in, something that has seemed 
to the world impossible and absurd, and they 
have set forth to seek it. A new continent 
across the ocean, a new passage from sea to 
sea, a new lake among the forests, a new land 
to be possessed and cultivated, a goal beyond 
sight and beyond knowledge, apprehended and 
realized by a heroic faith, has drawn them over 
stormy seas and inhospitable deserts, through 
rugged mountains and trackless jungles. They 
have believed, and therefore adventured. 

Nor has their faith been lacking, for the most 
part, in a spiritual element. There is hardly 
197 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


one of them — not one, I think, among the very 
greatest of the world’s explorers — who has not 
believed in God, and in his overruling Provi- 
dence, and in his call to them to undertake their 
adventures. It is wonderful and beautiful to 
see how this religious element has entered into 
the exploration of the earth, and how faith has 
asserted itself in the most famous and glorious 
journeyings of men. We see Columbus plant- 
ing the standard of the cross on the lonely beach 
of San Salvador; and Balboa kneeling silent, 
with uplifted hands, on the cliff from which he 
first caught sight of the Pacific; and Livingstone 
praying in his tent in the heart of Africa. From 
all the best and the bravest adventurers we 
hear the confession that they are the servants 
of a Divine Being, summoned and sent by him 
to a work for which they would give him the 
glory. 

Now the life of Abraham takes an honour- 
able place in the history of adventure for sev- 
eral reasons. It seems to me that its antiquity 
and originality entitle it to respect. But apart 
from this, in itself Abraham’s adventure was 
momentous and significant. Other enterprises 
may appear to us more important and eventful 
than his; but, after all, it may be doubted 
whether any expedition that man has ever un- 
198 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


dertaken has had larger results in the history 
of the world than the emergence of the father 
of the Hebrew race from Mesopotamian bond- 
age. Other journeys may seem to us more 
striking and wonderful than his pilgrimage 
from Ur of the Chaldees to the land of Canaan; 
but if we knew the story of its hardships and 
perils, if we understood the complex civilization 
which he forsook and the barbarism which he 
faced, we might not think it unworthy to be 
compared with the most famous travels. But 
the one thing in this ancient story which has 
survived the oblivion of the centuries, the one 
thing which shines out in it clear and distinct, 
and makes it glorious and precious beyond com- 
parison, is its imperishable and unalterable tes- 
timony to the power of faith to make a brave 
man face the unknown. 

Abraham believed. He lived in an idolatrous 
country. Every one about him, even his own 
father and his family, worshipped idols. But 
Abraham’s soul pierced through all these false- 
hoods and delusions of men to find and clasp 
the one living and true God who is a Spirit. 

Abraham believed. He was surrounded by 
the unrighteousness that a corrupt religion al- 
ways sanctions and intensifies. The pollutions 
and cruelties of heathen life touched him on 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


every side, and must have left their stain upon 
him. He himself was far from righteous. There 
were flaws in his character, blots upon his con- 
duct. But one thing he did not do. He did 
not carve an idol out of his own sin and call it 
a God. He believed in a God who was not 
lower but higher than himself, — a God of purity, 
of holiness, of truth, of mercy; and that faith, 
having in itself the power to uplift and purify, 
was counted to him for righteousness, — yea, it 
was better than any outward conformity to a 
code of morality, just as religion is better than 
ethics, because it has the promise of growth and 
enlargement and an endless life. 

Abraham believed. He was bound by the 
ties of the world, of habit, of social order, of 
self-interest, — by all those delicate and innu- 
merable threads which seem to fasten a man to 
the ground, as the Lilliputians fastened Gulliver, 
and make liberty of thought, of belief, of con- 
duct impossible. But in the midst of his bond- 
age Abraham heard the voice of the God who 
had a message, a mission, a call for his soul, — 
a message which meant spiritual freedom, a 
mission which could only be fulfilled by obe- 
dience, a call which said, “Get thee out of thy 
country, and from thy kindred, and from thy 
father’s house, unto the land that I will show 
200 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 

thee.” Think what that involved, — separa- 
tion from the past, resignation of all his cus- 
toms and plans of life, the entrance upon an 
untrodden path, the following of an unseen and 
absolute guidance, the consecration of his life 
to a journey through strange lands, among 
strange people, towards a strange goal, — the 
final and supreme adventure of his soul. But 
Abraham obeyed the call. “He went out, not 
knowing whither he went.” And that was 
faith. 

Let us think for a little while of this aspect 
of faith. It is an adventure. It is a going out 
into the unknown future under the guidance of 
God. 

I. All faith recognizes that life is a pilgrim- 
age whose course and duration cannot be fore- 
seen. That is true, indeed, whether we ac- 
knowledge it or not. Even if a man should 
fancy that his existence was secure, and that 
he could direct his own career and predict his 
own future, experience would teach him his 
mistake. But the point is that faith recognizes 
this uncertainty of life at the outset, and in a 
peculiar way, which transforms it from a curse 
into a blessing and makes it possible for us even 
to be glad that we must “go out not knowing 
whither we go.” 


201 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


For what is it that faith does with these lives 
of ours ? It just takes them up out of our weak, 
trembling, uncertain control and puts them 
into the hands of God. It makes them a part 
of his great plan. It binds them fast to his 
pure and loving will, and fills them with his 
life. Unless we believe that God has made us 
and made us for himself, unless we believe that 
he has something for each one of us to do and 
to be, unless we believe that he knows what 
our life’s way should be and has marked it out 
for us, how is it possible for us to go forward 
with cheerful confidence? But if we do be- 
lieve this, then of course we shall be willing to 
accept our own ignorance of the future, and, 
so far from hindering us in our advance, it will 
encourage and strengthen us to remember that 
the meaning of our life is so large that we can- 
not understand it. It will not fit into our broken 
and imperfect knowledge just because it does fit 
perfectly into the great wisdom of God. 

The man who has no faith either accepts the 
uncertainty of life as a necessity of fate; he is 
caught in the net of a hidden destiny, which 
to him can never seem anything else than a 
blind chance, because there is no purpose and 
no law in it, — or else he fights against the un- 
certainty of life, and tries to conquer it by his 
202 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


own skill and prudence and pertinacity. He 
chooses the object of his ambition, and the line 
of conduct which shall lead him to it; he marks 
out a career for himself, and pushes forward 
to fulfil it according to his own plan. And then 
every event that crosses his plan is a cause of 
anxiety and irritation; every call of duty that 
lies outside of it is an interruption and a burden; 
every change that comes to him is a disappoint- 
ment and a defeat; every delay in the accom- 
plishment of his schemes frets him to the heart; 
and when disaster and sickness and death come 
near to him he trembles, for he knows that they 
may easily wreck and destroy his life. He 
means to be a self-made man; he will supply 
the material and construct the model; he as- 
sures himself that he knows what the result 
will be. But all the time he is working among 
forces which may shatter him and his plan in 
a moment. Even while he dreams of success 
he stands face to face with failure. It seems to 
me that must make life a feverish and fitful 
thing; a long, weary, continual anxiety of heart. 

But the man who has faith accepts the un- 
certainty of life as the consequence of its larger 
significance; he cannot interpret it, because it 
means so much; he cannot trace its lines 
through to the end, because it has no end, it 
203 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

runs on into God’s eternity. Something better 
is coming into it than worldly success. Some- 
thing better is coming out of it than wealth or 
fame or power. He is not making himself. God 
is making him, and that after a model which 
eye hath not seen, but which is to be manifest 
in the consummation of the sons of God. So 
he can toil away at his work, not knowing 
whether he is to see its result now or not, but 
knowing that God will not let it be wasted. 
So he can run with patience the race that is 
set before him, not knowing whether he shall 
come in first or last among his fellows, but 
knowing that his prize is secure. So he can 
labour at the edifice of his life, not knowing 
whether it is to be finished according to his 
plans or not, but knowing that it surely will 
be completed, and surely will find its place in 
the great temple which God is building. Thus 
his uncertainty becomes the ground of his cer- 
tainty. Failure, disaster, ruin are impossible for 
him. Change may come to him as it comes to 
other men, but it does not mean calamity. Dis- 
appointment he may have to meet as other men 
meet it, but it cannot bring despair. Death 
will surely find him, and he cannot tell when it 
will come; but he knows that it will not come 
before the time; it will not break his life off in 
204 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


the middle, but will finish one part of it and 
begin another. Loss, final and irretrievable 

loss, — no, the man who believes never can be 

lost, because he willingly goes forth not know- 
ing whither he goes, with God for his leader 
and guide. 

II. This, then, is the broadest meaning of 
faith’s adventure: it is the surrender of life to 
a hidden guidance. And bound up together 
with this, as an essential part of it, we find the 
necessity that faith should accept the religious 
life as an adventure full of unknown trials and 
tests and temptations. No one can tell before- 
hand just how many hardships he must pass 
through, just how many sacrifices he must make, 
just how many assaults of evil he must resist* 
if he sets out to walk with God. 

Abraham did not know what would meet him 
on his life-long journey: the day of peril in 
Egypt when he would break down and disgrace 
himself; the day of dissension with Lot when 
he would prove his fidelity and his love; the 
days of conflict with the Rephaim and the Zuzim 
and the Emim and the Horites, when he would 
overthrow them; the day of temptation when 
the king of Sodom would offer to make him 
rich; the day of sharpest sorrow when he would 
be called to show his supreme devotion by re- 
205 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


signing his beloved son into the hands of the 
Lord, — all these days were hidden from him as 
he entered upon the long journey. All that 
God required of him was that he would meet 
them as they came; not beforehand, in imagina- 
tion, in promise and definite resolution, but at 
the appointed hour, in the crisis of trial: then, 
and not till then, Abraham must face his con- 
flict, and make his sacrifice, and hold fast his 
faith. 

Not otherwise does God deal with us. He 
does not show us exactly what it will cost to 
obey him. He asks us only to give what he 
calls for from day to day. Here is one sacrifice 
right in front of us that we must make now in 
order to serve God, — some evil habit to be given 
up, some lust of the flesh to be crucified and 
slain; and that is our trial for to-day. But to- 
morrow that trial may be changed from a hard- 
ship into a blessing, it may become a joy and 
triumph to us; and another trial, new, differ- 
ent, unforeseen, may meet us in the way. Now, 
perhaps, it is poverty that you have to endure, 
fighting with its temptations to envy and dis- 
content, and general rebellion against the or- 
der of the world; ten years hence, it may be 
wealth that will test you with its temptations 
to pride, and luxury, and self-reliance, and gen- 
eral arrogance towards your fellow-men. Now, 
206 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 

it may be some selfish indulgence that you have 
to resign; to-morrow, it may be some one whom 
you love, from whom you must consent to part 
at the call of God. To-day, it may be your 
ease, your comfort, your indolence that you 
must sacrifice for the sake of doing good in 
the world; to-morrow, it may be your activity, 
your energy, the work you delight in, that you 
must give up while sickness lays its heavy hand 
upon you, and bids you “ stand and wait.” To- 
day one thing, to-morrow another thing; and 
God does not tell you what it will be. He calls 
you to go out into your adventure not know- 
ing whither you go. 

It is this very indefiniteness of the Christian 
life that frightens unbelief and allures faith. 
It is this very necessity of facing the unknown 
that divides between doubting and believing 
souls. If we doubt the power and the love of 
God, if we doubt the grace and the truth of 
Christ, we will hesitate and hold back. We 
will demand to know all about the way before 
we enter upon it. “How much must we give 
up, what sacrifices must we make, how shall 
we ever be able to meet the trials and tempta- 
tions of the future ? No, we cannot go out after 
Christ, because we do not know where he will 
lead us and how hard it may be to follow.” 

But if we believe that this God is our God, 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and will be our guide even unto death, if we 
believe that this Christ is our only Saviour and 
Master, our Divine Leader and Guide, then we 
can go after him the more gladly just because 
he does not tell us all at once what we must 
resign and suffer and resist for his sake. That, 
indeed, might crush and dishearten us; for if 
we knew all at once, we could not help trying 
our strength against it all. But since we know 
only to-day’s temptation, to-day’s trial, to- 
day’s conflict, to-day’s cross, to-day; since we 
know that he who ordered it is with us and will 
help us to bear it, — we can follow him in con- 
fidence. 

“We know not what the path may he 
As yet by us untrod; 

But we can trust our all to thee , 

Our Father and our God. 

If called like Abram's child to climb 
The hill of sacrifice , 

Some angel may he there in time , 

Deliverance may arise. 

Or if some darker lot he good , 

Oh teach us to endure 

The sorrow , pain , or solitude , 

That makes the spirit pure." 

III. Once more, the adventure of faith in- 
volves the going out to meet unknown duties 
and to perform hidden tasks. 

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ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


In one sense the scheme and outline of a 
religious life are clear and distinct beforehand; 
the principles of faith and hope and love by 
which it is to be guided, the laws of righteous- 
ness and truth and mercy by which it is to be 
governed, are fixed and unchangeable, the same 
always and for all men. But in another sense 
the religious life has no scheme and outline at 
all. Its responsibilities, its opportunities, its 
labours arise from day to day. One man has 
one thing to do; another man has another thing 
to do. The duty of the present may be changed, 
enlarged, transformed in the future. 

See how this is brought out in the life of Abra- 
ham. At first he has only to bear witness to 
the true God among an idolatrous people; and 
then he has to set out on a perilous journey 
towards Canaan; and then he has to take care 
of his flocks and herds in the wilderness; and 
then he has to deliver his kinsman Lot from the 
sword of the tyrant Chedorlaomer; and then 
he has to exercise hospitality towards the angels 
of God. Abraham’s duty is not written down 
and delivered to him at the beginning. It is 
kept secret from him, and he goes out to meet 
it, not knowing what it will be. 

That is the law of the life of faith. The man 
who takes a principle into his heart commits 
himself to an uncertainty, he enters upon an 
209 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


adventure. He must be ready for unexpected 
calls and new responsibilities. 

The Samaritan who rode down from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho had nothing to do in the morn- 
ing but follow that highway, and take care that 
his beast did not stumble or hurt itself, or get 
tired out so that it could not finish the journey. 
He was just a solitary horseman, and all that 
he needed to do was to have a good seat in the 
saddle and a light hand on the bit. But at 
noon, when he came to the place where that 
unknown pilgrim lay senseless and bleeding be- 
side the road, — then, in a moment, the Samari- 
tan’s duty changed, and God called him to be 
a rescuer, a nurse, a helper of the wounded. 

Peter, when he rested on the housetop in 
Joppa, was only a pastor of the Jewish Chris- 
tian church; his mission was to instruct and 
guide his kinsmen according to the flesh. But 
when the great vision of a catholic church flashed 
upon him, when the knocking of the messengers 
of the Roman centurion sounded up from the 
gate of the courtyard, then, in a moment, Peter’s 
duty was changed, and he was called to go to 
the house of a Gentile and proclaim the gospel 
of Christ without respect of persons. Read the 
lives of the heroes of faith, and you will find 
that they are all like this. They set out to per- 
210 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 

form, not one task only, but anything that 
God may command. They accept Christ’s 
commission, and set sail upon an unknown 
ocean with sealed orders. 

That takes courage. It is a risk, a venture. 
But for the spiritual as truly as for the temporal 
life the rule is, “Nothing venture, nothing win.” 
And is it not infinitely nobler and more inspir- 
ing to enter upon a career like that, — a career 
which is to run so close to God that he can speak 
into it and fill it with new meanings, new pos- 
sibilities, new tasks, at any moment, — is not 
that infinitely finer and more glorious than to 
make a contract to do a certain thing for a cer- 
tain price, as if God were a manufacturer and 
we were his mill-hands? It seems to me that 
this is the very proof and bond of friendship 
with him, this calling of faith to an unlimited 
and undefined obedience. If we will accept it, 
it will send us forward on a life that grows and 
expands and unfolds itself, and wins new powers 
and capacities, as it girds itself to meet the new 
duties that lie hidden in the future. It will 
not be a dull and dry routine : it will be an en- 
terprise, a voyage of discovery, an exploration 
of the divine possibilities of living. And the 
joy of it, the enthusiasm and inspiration of it, 
will not be the tame thought that nothing more 
211 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


can be required of us than what we already 
see, but the strong assurance that power will 
be given to us for every task that our Master 
sets. “ Follow me,” he cried, “and I will make 
you fishers of men.” How and when and where 
they should labour the disciples knew not. They 
knew only that he would fit them for their duty 
when it met them. Even so he speaks to us. 
And even so we must follow him into the un- 
known future, answering his call in the noble 
words of St. Augustine: “Lord, give what thou 
commandest, and command what thou wilt.” 

IV. Only one word remains to be added. 
Faith is an adventure; it is the courage of the 
soul to face the unknown. But that courage 
springs from the hope and confidence of the 
soul that its adventure will succeed. Beyond 
the unknown, beyond the uncertainties and 
perils and responsibilities of the earthly future, 
it sees the certain, the secure, the imperishable, 
— “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled 
and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven 
for you, who are kept by the power of God 
through faith unto salvation, ready to be re- 
vealed in the last time.” 

How grandly that certainty of faith comes 
out in the story of Abraham ! A pilgrim and 
a stranger, a man without a country, wander- 
212 


ABRAHAM’S ADVENTURE 


in g up and down between the lands of Egypt 
and Chaldea, involved in strange conflicts and 
unexpected trials, his white tent shining in the 
sunlight and shaking in the wind, as it rested 
here and there among the highland pastures 
and on the steep hills of Canaan, for a hundred 
years, a sojourner in the land of promise as in 
a land not his own, — yet that old father of the 
faithful, that friend and follower of God, was 
never an aimless man, never an uncertain man, 
never a hopeless man. He went forth not know- 
ing whither he went, but he also looked for “a 
city that hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God.” 

Sublime assurance, glorious pilgrimage! Is 
not that the type and symbol of the life of faith ? 
Of the nearer future, the future that lies among 
the mountains and valleys, the pastures and 
deserts of this world, it is ignorant, and yet it 
does not fear to face it; for it sees that the final 
future, the blessed rest and reward of the soul 
that serves and follows its Divine Master, is 
secure. It knows whither Christ has gone, 
and it knows the hidden way. And along that 
way it presses steadily to its goal of everlasting 
peace. 

“On through waste and blackness 9 
O'er our desert road; 

213 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


On till Sinai greet us. 
Mountain of our God l 
On 'past Edom’s valley, 
Moab’s mountain wall, 
Jordan’s seaboard rushings. 
The pillar cloud o’er all l 
Past the palmy city. 

Rock and hill our road , 
On till Salem greet us, 

City of our God l” 


XI 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 


"Give me now wisdom and knowledge .” — I Chron. 1 : 10. 



T^HESE words were spoken by Solomon, the 
greatest, wisest, and in some respects the 
meanest of the Hebrew kings. His life is one 
of the standing riddles of history. Never man 
began so fairly and ended so darkly. The blos- 
soms of his youth were like the flowers on the 
tree of life: the fruits of his old age were like 
Dead Sea apples, full of dust. In him genius 
was wedded to sin, and success was the mother 
of failure. Bright as was the promise of his 
early years, glorious as were the achievements 
of his manhood, the clouds that gathered round 
his death were so heavy and dark that men 
have remained in doubt whether his final place 
is among the saved or among the lost. The 
fathers of the church held opposite opinions on 
the subject; and in Pietro Lorenzetti’s great 
fresco of the resurrection, in the Campo Santo 
at Pisa, the uncertainty of Solomon’s fate is 
represented by the painter, who has placed him 


215 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


in the middle of the picture, looking doubtfully 
around, not knowing whether he is to be called 
to the right hand or to the left. Perhaps, after 
all, the painter was prudent, for the question 
of final destiny is one which we can never solve 
in regard to any human being. Wise and sim- 
ple, beggar and king, as they pass from our 
sight, we must leave them to the justice and 
mercy of the omniscient God. 

But the questions of character and conduct 
as they arise here in this world are within the 
reach of our understanding, and it is to a study 
of some of these questions as they are suggested 
by the life of Solomon that I invite your at- 
tention now. The history of his life is illus- 
trated in three great visions which came to him 
at three successive periods of his strange career. 
Three times God visited him in the night 
watches: three times the curtain which hides 
the future was lifted, and the darkness of his 
sleep was illumined with the secret flash of 
truth. 

The first vision came at the beginning of his 
career, when the untried course of life was just 
opening before him. It contained a glorious 
promise and a solemn warning. It revealed the 
elements of strength and the elements of weak- 
ness in one of the most marvellous characters 
216 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 


the world has ever seen. The Lord appeared to 
him in Gibeon and said, “Ask what I shall give 
thee.” Solomon’s answer was in the words of 
the text. 

The second vision came to him at the very 
climax of his splendour and power, when the 
great temple, which was the central spot of 
glory in his land and in his reign, was completed 
and dedicated. When the echoes of rejoicing 
had died away in the royal city, and the people 
were returning with gladness to their tents, 
then the Lord appeared to Solomon the second 
time, as he had appeared unto him at Gibeon. 
The awful voice, sounding in the silence of the 
king’s heart, declared that the prayer of dedica- 
tion had been heard. The temple was accepted 
and blessed. God would make his dwelling 
there perpetually. “But if ye shall at all turn 
from following me, ye or your children, and will 
not keep my commandments and my statutes 
which I have set before you, but go and serve 
other gods, and worship them; then will I cut 
off Israel out of the land which I have given 
them; and this house, which I have hallowed 
for my name, will I cast out of my sight; and 
Israel shall be a proverb and a byword among 
all nations.” 

The third vision came to the king in the de- 

217 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

cline and shame of his old age, when the evils 
against which he had been warned had come 
upon him, when his heart had been entangled 
with strange women and stranger gods, when 
the misused wealth and perverted power which 
had been his were turning to dross and corrup- 
tion within his hands. Then God was angry 
with him, and appeared to him once more and 
said: “Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and 
thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes 
which I have commanded thee, I will surely 
rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it 
to thy servant. Notwithstanding in thy days 
I will not do it, for David thy father’s sake: 
but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son.” 
A dreadful dream, stern, angry, terrible: the 
only gleam of mercy in it was shown, not for 
Solomon’s sake, but for the sake of his dead 
father, who was dear to God; a vision of dis- 
honour and darkness and swift-coming disaster 
closing with black w T ings about the declining 
days of him who had once been the brightest 
and most prosperous and best beloved of Is- 
rael’s monarchs. What is the meaning of it? 
How shall we explain it? How shall we read 
and understand its lesson? How is it possible 
that a dream so bright and fair as that which 
crowned his youth should turn into a dream 
218 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 


so black and shameful as that which shadowed 
his old age ? 

It is to solve this mystery that I ask you to 
turn back again to the opening vision of Solo- 
mon’s life. Scrutinize it more closely, study it 
more deeply. See if you cannot discern in it 
the fatal flaw which marred the character of 
the royal philosopher, and through which at 
last his life was brought to ruin. 

The circumstances of Solomon at the time 
of this first and most famous dream are worthy 
of our careful attention. He was, as you know, 
the youngest son of King David, who, despite 
his great faults, by his strong and heroic quali- 
ties, under the blessing of God, had brought 
the kingdom to a state of prosperity and power. 
The sovereignty of Israel at the close of David’s 
long and warlike reign was something vastly 
richer and grander and more potent than it 
was when the big, blundering Saul was chosen 
king; and the sceptre which David held in his 
weary and trembling hand was the symbol of a 
wide and successful dominion over a turbulent 
but mighty people. To whom should he leave 
it ? His two oldest sons, Absalom and Ammon, 
had proved unworthy, and were dead. The old 
king’s heart turned now to his last-born child, 
the darling of his declining years, and to him 
219 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

lie gave the kingdom, calling him Solomon, 
“the peaceful one,” and centring all the hope 
and love of his heart upon the happiness and 
prosperity of this chosen son. 

How strange it is, and yet how common, for 
the father to desire a character and destiny for 
his son different from his own ! The man of 
war desires his heir to be a man of peace. And 
how strange also, and yet how nearly inevitable, 
that the father’s sins should entwine themselves 
with the life of the child that he loves best ! 

The mother of Solomon was Bathsheba, a 
woman of great beauty, but of whose moral 
character the less said the better, for she was 
certainly the occasion, and I cannot help feel- 
ing that she was at least passively the cause, of 
her husband’s death and her monarch’s crime; 
and she was the only one who profited by the 
whole shameful history, for it raised her not 
unwillingly from the wife of a common man to 
the wife of a king. “Now in Eastern lands 
and under a system of polygamy,” says a wise 
observer, “the son is more dependent even 
than elsewhere upon the character of the 
mother.” And I believe that Solomon’s whole 
life felt the influence of such a mother. Ambi- 
tious but comfort-loving, passionate but cold, 
inwardly sensual but outwardly devout, fasci- 
220 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 

nating but intensely selfish, she was one of those 
whom Goethe called “problematic characters,” 
who attain the greatest external success, but 
are forever unhappy and unsatisfied because 
they never lose or forget themselves. And from 
her, by birth and education, Solomon received 
the qualities which were brought out in his 
after-life. 

He was admirably fitted to rule, trained in 
all the requirements of royalty, inspired with 
a sense of the dignity and responsibility of his 
position, every inch a king; but he was never 
taught to escape from his greatest foe and final 
destroyer, himself; and thus his noblest ac- 
tions and his greatest successes were turned 
into failures. 

But we are running before our history. Let 
us turn back to regard Solomon, the young 
king, not yet twenty years of age, seated on 
the throne of his father, the inheritor of a do- 
minion among the most splendid of the Eastern 
world. He desires to inaugurate his reign with 
an act of religious worship, for this is eminently 
proper, and in no other way will his royal mag- 
nificence be seen to better advantage. God has 
forbidden the people to offer sacrifice in the 
high places on the mountain-tops, but custom 
has sanctioned the violation of this command* 
221 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and Solomon cares more for the popular usage 
and for a grand display than for a forgotten 
and obsolete law. He goes with a solemn pro- 
cession to the top of Mt. Gibeon, where stands 
the great brazen altar of Bezaleel, and there 
he offers a thousand burnt-offerings, filling the 
whole heavens with the smoke of his kingly 
sacrifices and the noise of his royal worship. 

The smoke rolls away. The last echoes of 
the solemn music die among the hills. Solomon 
is asleep in his tent on the mountain. And now 
comes that wondrous dream which foreshadows 
the course of his whole life. God appears to 
him, and asks him to choose that which he de- 
sires more than all things else. Solomon chooses 
“wisdom and knowledge to go out and come in 
before the people.” God approves the choice 
and promises to add wealth and honour. Solo- 
mon awakes and the dream is true; but, for 
all that, he dies in sin and sorrow and dishonour. 
How shall we explain the mystery? 

Three questions, it seems to me, will go to 
the root of the matter: — 

Why did God approve of Solomon’s choice, 
and yet not approve of him ? 

Why was Solomon the wisest of men, and 
yet one of the greatest of fools ? 

Why did Solomon have all that he desired, 
and yet remain forever unsatisfied ? 

222 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 


I. God approved of Solomon’s choice be- 
cause it was relatively right. As between wealth 
and fame and wisdom, the young king instantly 
and instinctively seized the greatest and noblest 
of the three. Wisdom is more than riches or 
fame, because it is the fountain of both. An 
understanding heart, the ability to discriminate 
between the good and the bad among men and 
causes and enterprises, is certainly the most 
valuable possession for every man, especially 
for one who is called to rule over his fellows. 
For without this, the richest and most power- 
ful potentate will come to nought. How strange 
that men, even from the standpoint of this 
world, do not understand this ! They crave 
wealth, not thinking that wealth in the hands 
of a fool only makes him a prey to knaves. They 
aspire to power, not remembering that power 
in the hands of one who is not wise enough for 
it only makes him a laughing-stock. How many 
a weak brother, who might have lived respected 
in obscurity, has become ridiculous by the sud- 
den gift of riches or office ! Wisdom is the prin- 
cipal thing, for if a man has that he can acquire 
and use the others. And Solomon’s magnif- 
icence, the prosperity of his kingdom, and the 
fame of his reign all came from his gift of wis- 
dom, so wisely chosen. 

But although this choice was relatively right, 
223 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


it was not absolutely the best. There was some- 
thing better for which he might have asked, 
and which, if he had received it, would have 
brought down the blessing of God not only 
upon his reign, but upon his own soul forever. 

What was the burden of David’s prayers 
before God? What was the deep and burning 
desire of David’s heart, not only in his youth, 
but also in his old age, growing and deepening 
as it was answered and fed by God? It was 
the longing for holiness, the consuming hunger 
and thirst after righteousness, which is the 
noblest pain and the richest want of the soul. 
Blessed are they who feel it, for they shall be 
filled. “ Create in me a clean heart, O God, 
and renew a right spirit within me.” This was 
David’s prayer, the highest and the best: not 
first an understanding heart, but first a clean 
heart, cleansed by the Divine pardon from the 
stains of guilt, and freed by the Divine power 
from the defilement of sin. He felt the burden 
of iniquity, the shame and sorrow of unclean- 
ness, the slavery of self, and he cried to be de- 
livered. If God would grant him this, it would 
be more to him than all beside. “ Purge me 
with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and 
I shall be whiter than snow.” 

This is the noblest choice. Wisdom is good, 
224 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 

but holiness is as far above wisdom as Christ 
is above Socrates. If Solomon had only been 
wise enough to choose this, if he had only felt 
his greatest weakness and his deepest need, 
and asked for a pure and holy heart, how rich 
beyond expression would have been the results 
of that prayer, — rich not only for this world, 
but for that which is to come: rich in the ap- 
proval of the living God; rich in the salvation 
of his immortal soul; rich in an entrance into 
that heavenly kingdom which shall endure 
when all the thrones and crowns and sceptres 
of this world have crumbled into dust! 

Let us remember that while these earthly 
kingdoms are founded upon wealth and power 
and wisdom, God’s kingdom is founded on 
holiness of character. And though we may 
achieve greatness in these lower realms, though 
we may become merchant princes, or political 
rulers, or kings of thought, the least in the king- 
dom of heaven, yes, the simplest, poorest child 
who has known God’s love and felt his purify- 
ing Spirit in the heart, will be greater than we 
are, so long as our sole inheritance is in the 
kingdoms of this world. 

II. Why was Solomon the wisest of men, 
and yet one of the greatest of fools? In order 
to answer this question we must scrutinize his 
225 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


choice very closely. And if we do this we shall 
see that the wisdom for which he asked was 
peculiar and limited. It was political wisdom, 
such as befits a king and renders him able to 
rule successfully over the minds of men. He 
felt that the difficulties of governing his tumul- 
tuous and rebellious people would be almost 
insuperable unless he had a more than human 
insight into character, and tact in controlling 
men. And so he asked for wisdom and knowl- 
edge to go out and come in before the people. 

Now, as a king, this was what he most needed. 
But Solomon was a man before he was a king. 
And, as a man, what he most needed was an 
understanding heart to guide his own life. Per- 
haps he thought he was wise enough for this 
already. Perhaps he thought he was able to 
rule his inner kingdom for himself, if God would 
only help him with the outer. And herein lay 
his folly, for a man can more easily control and 
guide the destinies of a great nation than he 
can bind and direct the passions of his own dis- 
ordered and tumultuating heart. 

It is easier to take a city than to rule your 
own spirit. History proves it in the lives of 
hundreds of great men who have been able to 
control the forces of politics, but not to guide 
their own lives, not to resist their own besetting 
226 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 

sins of avarice or lust. It would be strange if 
we could not read this lesson in our own times 
in the dark, sad story of Rudolph, the crown- 
prince of Austria. Heir to one of the proudest 
thrones of Europe, brilliant in his natural gifts, 
and developed by education into a man of many 
accomplishments, skilled in art and letters, 
and qualified to adorn his lofty station with ex- 
traordinary success, he was driven by his own 
hot and untamed passions, in the prime of his 
young manhood, to a dishonourable death. 

Solomon’s fatal weakness was for wives. I 
do not suppose that we are to understand that 
he was a gross sensualist. He probably sought 
mental excitement and change in the organiza- 
tion of his great household. One of his chief 
objects was to increase his political influence 
by contracting alliances with the princesses of 
surrounding nations. He thought he could 
manage the women, but he was foolish, for of 
course the women managed him. And still he 
went on adding to his burdens and entangle- 
ments, every month bringing a new princess 
into the royal household, and every princess 
bringing a new god, until at length he had seven 
hundred wives and three hundred concubines, 
and I think we must agree that the last state 
of that man was worse than the first. Hated 
227 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


by his people for the heavy burdens of taxation 
which he was forced to lay upon them for the 
support of his costly household, turned hither 
and thither by wives who neither understood 
his wisdom nor cared for his greatness but only 
for his gold, worshipping at the shrines of a 
hundred gods in none of whom he believed, — 
what an old age is this ! It is the very mockery 
of greatness, the supreme irony of fate, that 
the hoary head of the wisest of monarchs should 
be crowned by his own hands with the cap of 
the fool. And all this because he did not under- 
stand that to guide one’s own life is a harder 
and more perilous task than to rule a kingdom, 
because he did not learn to pray with David, 
“ Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in 
a plain path; send out thy light and thy truth, 
let them lead me.” 

III. Let us ask, now, the third and last 
question. Why did Solomon have all that he 
desired, and yet remain unhappy ? The answer 
is simple and straightforward: because he never 
forgot or lost himself. He tried to be happy. 
That was the chief end and aim of his life, his 
own success, his own felicity. He did not seek 
it in a low and sensual way; not in coarse plea- 
sures nor in trifling pursuits. Solomon was far 
too wise for that. But in a high and grand and 
228 


SOLOMON’S CHOICE 


royal way he sought for happiness. The de- 
light of knowing and understanding all things, 
the joy of feeling that in him more wisdom was 
centred than in all men before or after, the pride 
of the most splendid temple and the most pros- 
perous kingdom and the most beneficent reign, 
— thus he sought his happiness and thus he 
never found it; for it is a law of God that they 
who will be happy never shall be; never shall 
clasp the phantom after which they run so 
eagerly, never shall feel the deep sweet calm 
of a contented soul, never shall rest in perfect 
peace, until they cease their mad chase, forget 
and deny themselves, and are lost and absorbed 
in some noble and unselfish pursuit. Then, and 
then only, happiness comes, as the angels came 
to Jesus in the desert, and in Gethsemane, when 
he had renounced all hope of joy. 

“He that loseth his life shall find it.” The 
words of the Master, who was wiser than Solo- 
mon, are true now as then. We cannot have 
happiness until we forget to seek for it. We 
cannot find peace until we enter the path of 
self-sacrificing usefulness. We cannot be de- 
livered from this “vain expense of passions 
that forever ebb and flow,” this wretched, tor- 
turing, unsatisfied, unsatisfying self, until we 
come to Jesus and give our lives to him to be 
229 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


absorbed as his life was in loving obedience to 
God and loving service to our fellow-men. 

Let us draw this lesson from Solomon’s 
dream. If God says to us, in the bright 
promise of youth, “ Ask what I shall give thee,” 
let us make the best choice, and answer: Give 
me grace to know thy Son, the Christ, and to 
grow like him; for that is the true wisdom which 
leads to eternal life, and that is the true royalty 
which brings dominion over self, and that is 
the true happiness which flows unsought from 
fellowship with the Divine Life. 


230 


XII 

THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 


“ Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and 
consume them ?" — Luke 9 : 54. 


“ Beloved , let us love one another : for love is of God ; and every one that 
lovetk is born of God, and knoweth God " — I John 4 : 7. 


HE common conception of the person and 



A character of the apostle John regards him 
as a soft, affectionate dreamer. We imagine 
him as he is usually drawn by the painters, a 
fair, effeminate youth, with long curling hair, 
and a lackadaisical expression. Now that he 
was a youth is certain; that he was of a fair 
countenance is possible, perhaps even probable; 
but that he was in any sense effeminate is an 
utter misconception. He was no idle dreamer 
of dreams, no mild religious mystic. He and 
his brother James were called Boanerges , sons 
of thunder, men of fiery courage, mighty power. 
His symbol was not the meek and melancholy 
dove mourning in solitude, but the royal eagle, 
broad of wing, keen of eye, sweeping with fear- 
less breast far up into the azure, bathed in the 
full splendours of God’s sunlight. John was no 


231 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


delicate, luxurious religionist, content to be 
“ carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.” 
He had his own fight to wage, his own tempta- 
tions to vanquish, his own adversary in the 
heart to conquer. And because he fought the 
fight bravely, enduring hardship as becometh 
a good soldier, his Master loved him with a 
peculiar love. 

In looking at the development of the char- 
acter of John, as it is recorded in the gospels 
and his own epistles, we shall find a course of 
affairs which is best summed up in two words: — 

Antagonism and transformation. 

I. First, I think, we see the character of 
John in antagonism to his Master. Certain 
natural qualities and traits in the man put him 
out of sympathy with Jesus in the methods 
which he pursued in establishing his kingdom. 
John was inclined to a different course. He 
found himself in opposition, dissatisfied, per- 
haps even angry. 

The first of these antagonistic qualities, and 
probably the most fundamental, was a hot and 
zealous temper. His nature was quick, high- 
strung, impetuous. He was full of fire and 
force. Believing in Jesus with all his heart, 
John wished an instant and complete success 
for his ministry. Slow, patient teaching is well 
232 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

enough; healing the sick is well enough; pro- 
vided they succeed. But if they do not, if the 
people will not believe, some more heroic 
measure must be tried. Men must come into 
the kingdom of God: be persuaded in, drawn 
in, led in, if possible; but if not, they must be 
frightened in, driven in; any way they must 
come in. Christ’s kingdom must arrive at once, 
and if any man stand in the way let him be 
burned with fire. 

It was this headlong, untrained zeal that 
made John flame out so when passing through 
the inhospitable towns of Samaria. “What 
right,” he cried, “what right have these people 
to stand in thy way, 0 Lord ? What right have 
they to let their narrow national bigotry blind 
their eyes, and harden their hearts, and shut 
their doors against the Christ? Shall we com- 
mand fire to break out from heaven, as Elias 
did to his enemies, and consume them?” How 
gentle was the rebuke, how wise the answer of 
Jesus to this question of John: “You do not 
yet understand the spirit of my gospel, the 
spirit of love and peace. I am come to per- 
suade men, not to force them. If men are evil, 
I am not sent to slay and burn them, but to 
win them by the truth and save them from 
their sins. We must sow in patience and hope. 

233 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

God will give the increase in his own good 
time.” 

The second quality of antagonism in John 
was his ambition. That last infirmity of noble 
minds was the natural growth of such a char- 
acter as his. His clear fine spirit desired a lofty 
place. He wanted glory and honour and power. 
His mind was still possessed by the idea that 
Christ’s kingdom was to have a physical mani- 
festation, was to unfold into a splendid domina- 
tion of the earth. Filled with this thought he 
and his brother James came to Jesus begging 
that they might sit enthroned on either side of 
him. “Can ye bear the sorrows and pains that 
I must bear?” “Yea, Lord,” reply the over- 
confident disciples. “Ye shall indeed bear my 
sorrows and endure my anguish, and experience 
shall teach you how blind you have been. I 
cannot confer the glory of God’s kingdom by 
arbitrary favour, as government offices are con- 
ferred. It is the fruit and the reward of char- 
acter. Make yourself fit for it, learn to be as 
pure and teachable as a little child, and leave 
the rest to your heavenly Father.” 

II. Now you observe in regard to both of 
these antagonizing qualities in his young dis- 
ciple, that the method of Jesus was not eradica- 
tion but transformation. He did not despise 
234 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

and condemn them as utterly bad. He recog- 
nized zeal and ambition as natural forces, to 
be changed, directed, transformed into mighty 
agencies for good. And that is what Jesus did 
for John. By constant, patient teaching, but 
most of all by the power of his example, Jesus 
gave these qualities a higher form and guided 
them into their true channels. I can conceive 
of no influence more potent to enlighten and 
ennoble such a character as John’s than a life 
of constant contact with Jesus of Nazareth. 
How it must have sanctified and illumined his 
zeal to see his Master labouring so earnestly and 
patiently to win souls, enduring the contradic- 
tion of sinners, praying for his enemies, and 
giving his life as a ransom for those who hated 
him ! Think how it must have purified and 
chastened John’s ambition to see our blessed 
Lord, at the Last Supper, bend to wash the 
disciples’ feet ! That example taught John more 
than all formal doctrine. It had a mysterious 
blessed power to transform his very life. 

We cannot trace more closely the process of 
transformation in the character of John. But 
we can see the result in his life and labours. 
Those very qualities which were his weakness 
became his strength. Those traits which once 
put him in antagonism to Christ, afterwards 
235 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


bound him most closely to his Master in love 
and service. 

His fiery zeal was purified and exalted into 
a clear, passionate desire to win souls in the 
way which Christ had appointed. The divine 
commission, “Go, preach the gospel to every 
creature/’ took hold of John’s heart and filled 
it with eager courage. He went out with Peter, 
preaching and teaching and building up the 
churches of Judaea. When the Christians were 
expelled by persecution from Jerusalem, it was 
John who gathered them together in a place of 
refuge. Then, according to the most ancient 
tradition, he went down into Asia to follow up 
and complete the labours of Paul. He finally 
remained as bishop and pastor of the Church 
at Ephesus. 

See now what has become of John’s ambition. 
He is content to follow in the footsteps of an- 
other apostle, to dwell in a distant city of the 
Gentiles, in poverty and reproach, to accept an 
office in the feeble and persecuted Church of 
Jesus as the end of his life. Love to Christ has 
regenerated even his desires, has become the 
supreme and regnant passion, has made him 
ambitious only to serve and be like his beloved 
Master. 

It was in this spirit that John accepted the 
£36 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

bishopric and ruled in Ephesus. Love was the 
center and theme of his ministry. He taught 
love, preached love, practised love. Many and 
beautiful are the traditions of his life. It is 
said that at one time a noble and amiable youth 
was committed by his parents to the guardian- 
ship of John. He was obliged to go away on a 
long journey and left his ward in the care of 
some of the brethren. On the apostle’s return 
he was told that the youth had fallen into evil 
ways, had been tempted off into the wilderness 
by a band of desperate robbers, and had become 
their leader. John was filled with sorrow and 
self-reproach. He went out into the wild coun- 
try, penetrated to the stronghold of the robbers’ 
band, seized the young man by the hand, kissed 
it, and calling him by his familiar name, brought 
him back again to Ephesus. 

Filled with such labours of love and glorified 
with visions of heavenly mysteries, the long 
years of the apostle wear away. Out in the 
great Church of Ephesus, one Sunday morning, 
a vast congregation is gathered. They are wait- 
ing for some one. A wide sea of faces is turned 
upward. An expectant hush rests over the 
crowd. An old man is borne in by his atten- 
dants. His long hair and beard are white as 
snow. His eyes shine with a soft and gentle 
237 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


light. He lifts a tremulous hand. His voice is 
faint and slow as he speaks. Hark ! 

“Little children, love one another!” 

The words fall like a benediction. They are 
the last words of that disciple whom Jesus loved. 

Let us dwell for a few moments on the prac- 
tical lessons to be drawn from this great and 
beautiful change in the life of John, and see 
how they bear upon our own relations to Jesus 
Christ and our discipleship to him. There are 
three truths which seem to lie embedded in 
this experience of the apostle. 

1. Natural qualities which put us into an- 
tagonism to Christ ought not to drive us away 
from him. 

There are many traits and dispositions, de- 
sires and qualities in human nature which put 
men in a position of unsympathy with the reli- 
gion of Christ, make them feel uneasy and dis- 
contented under his guidance, dispose them to 
hang back from his service. Some of these 
traits of character are evil in themselves, such 
as untruthfulness, selfishness, intemperance. 
And these are things to which no man ought 
to cling. They are stains upon his life, and he 
ought to rejoice that in following Christ he must 
trample these shameful and unmanly things 
238 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

under his feet. Surely no one of you will be 
kept away from Christ by the reluctance to 
give up that which degrades your character, 
and makes you base and unworthy even in the 
scale of manhood. But it is not of these things 
that I wish to speak so much as of those quali- 
ties not good or bad in themselves, but depend- 
ing entirely upon the objects to which they are 
directed, and the way in which they are exer- 
cised. 

Take such a quality as physical courage and 
strength. There are many young men who 
are kept away from the Church by a false no- 
tion that these things are out of place there— 
that a Christian has no use for bravery and 
vigour, no scope for the exercise of well-trained 
bodily powers and a bold, fearless spirit. But 
where do we find such a notion of life save in 
the morbid theories of weak fanatics. The 
Christian must indeed keep his body and spirit 
under control, he must not be a mere animal 
or a reckless bravo; but within those limits 
he may exercise all his daring and skill and 
strength. The Church has need of brave sol- 
diers, strong labourers, dauntless explorers. 
Where would she be now had it not been for 
the bravery and endurance of those first apostles 
of the gospel? Where would our Protestant 
239 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


Church be had not the Reformers known how 
to wield the sword as well as read the Bible? 
Is not the world better and more Christian for 
the bravery of Luther and Livingstone and 
Havelock? “I write unto you young men be 
cause you are strong.” That was a good reason; 
for Jesus Christ has need of strong and brave 
disciples, to stand up well against the assaults 
of evil, to push through desert and jungle, over 
mountains and stormy seas with the message 
of the gospel, to endure hardness as good sol- 
diers, to fight and not be weary, to run and not 
faint. 

An eager and impetuous zeal often puts men 
out of sympathy with Christ. They find Chris- 
tianity too slow, too imperfect in its methods 
and results. Sometimes this zeal takes the form 
of self-criticism. Men say: “I w T ant a religion 
that shall make me good altogether and at once. 
I want to feel that I am utterly changed, trans- 
figured, renewed; and the lack of this is what 
keeps me away from Christ.” Is that true? 
Are you sincere? Then how foolish you are to 
stay away from Christ. For where else shall 
you find even the beginnings of that blessed 
change which you desire? Is it not better to 
have it slowly than not at all ? And if you come 
to him, you will find that your zeal to be made 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 

holy is not half so great as his willingness to 
help you and to perfect his will in your life. 

But more often this antagonistic overzeal ex- 
presses itself in harsh criticism of the Church 
and dissatisfaction with her success. Men com- 
plain that so few Christians are Christlike and 
so few sinners are converted. Now if that be 
merely a hypocritical excuse for avoiding the 
service of Christ there is nothing to be said. 
There is no Pharisaism so contemptible or so 
incorrigible. But if it spring from an honest 
and fervent zeal for the cause of Christ and a 
longing that his kingdom may have a wider 
and more glorious success, then it will not stand 
outside and spend its strength in bitter criticism, 
but come inside and labour earnestly for ref- 
ormation. And the more eagerly and zealously 
men labour for the kingdom of Christ, the better 
they will understand that his methods are the 
best, and that the kingdom is to be established 
not by calling down fire from heaven, but by 
the earnest, patient teaching of divine truth 
and the manifestation of Christlike love. 

2. These very qualities which seem at first 
antagonistic, may become the most blessed in 
the service of Christ. 

He does not propose to eradicate and destroy 
them, but to purify, direct, and use them in his 
241 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


kingdom, as the skillful inventor binds the winds 
to industry and makes the rushing torrents do 
his work. I have spoken of the noble tasks 
which physical courage and strength have per- 
formed for Christ. The life of John has shown 
us how a high-strung and ambitious nature may 
be used in his service. What a grand quality 
is zeal when it is sanctified and guided by a 
true devotion to Christ ! That zeal which 
makes martyrs and missionaries and reformers — 
that is what the Church needs to-day, a zeal 
that shall make us restless and discontented in 
the right way: not discontented with the plans 
and methods of Christ, but with our own feeble 
and imperfect execution of them; so that we 
shall strive to make Christianity more active, 
more thorough, more aggressive, to remove the 
obstacles, the shameful and harmful inconsis- 
tencies, to clear the way so that the gospel of 
Christ may have free course and be glorified 1 
So also of true ambition. It can be made 
most useful in the service of Christ. “Covet 
earnestly the best gifts,” wrote the apostle 
Paul. What a noble ambition was his ! To 
climb ever higher and higher in his spiritual 
attainments, to be more and more effective in 
his labours for Christ. If we could only get 
more of this right ambition how it would purify 
242 


THE MAKING OF ST. JOHN 


our modern life ! We should be rid of the insane 
thirst for office in church and state. We should 
desire not to be famous, but to do good; not 
to rule, but to be fit for it. We should long for 
character rather than reputation, for inward 
merit rather than outward honour. Our as- 
pirations after a pure and lofty life would lift 
us above our present meanness and littleness, 
and we should press eagerly towards the mark, 
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus. 

3. Finally, the way to have our natures thus 
nobly transformed is by a close and living con- 
tact with Christ. His teaching, his example, 
his companionship alone can change us into his 
image. 

There is an eastern legend of a rose so sweet 
that even the earth which lies around its roots 
becomes permeated with fragrance and little 
bits of it are sold as amulets and worn by princes. 
You and I are but common clay, but if we will 
lie close to Jesus Chirst, his sweetness will flow 
through our lives and make them fragrant and 
precious for ever. 


243 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 


“ For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid , which is J esus 


Christ — I Cor. 3 : 11. 



schools of architecture agree in one 


^ * point. However they may differ in theo- 
ries of construction or schemes of ornamenta- 
tion, they are at one in teaching that the most 
important part of every building is the founda- 


tion, 


The apostle Paul translates this truth into 
the terms of religion. He says that the essen- 
tial thing is to have a sure foundation for faith 
and character and life. He declares that such 
a foundation has been laid in Jesus Christ. And 
he adds that there is nothing in the universe to 
take the place of that foundation as a basis for 
all that is permanent and precious in existence. 

The apostle has been dead eighteen hundred 
years, but that splendid claim still stands. The 
number of those who have proved it by personal 
experience has increased century by century. 
Men have tried to lay other foundations, but 


244 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 


they and their works have vanished. The bon- 
fires have been kindled on a thousand hills, and 
have burned out. The floods have risen, and 
fallen, and swept away the frail edifices that 
have been built upon the sands of time. But 
the Impregnable Rock remains unshaken, lift- 
ing all the lives that have been founded upon 
it high above the wreck of ages, clear outlined 
against the sky, like a crown of towers and a 
city that hath foundations, whose builder and 
maker is God. 

Let us try to dig down into the meaning of 
this text and take the measure of it, as men 
have measured and admired the great founda- 
tions which modem archaeology has unearthed 
below the site of the ancient temple at Jeru- 
salem. 

In what sense is Jesus Christ the funda- 
mental reality of human life? 

I. Christ is the foundation of a reasonable 
faith. He underlies all true theology. With- 
out him we cannot “ assert eternal Providence 
and justify the ways of God to man.” The 
moral government of the universe becomes all 
dark and confused, “a mighty maze and all 
without a plan,” unless we believe in a divine 
Redeemer. The problem of the existence of 
evil under the rule of an absolutely good God 
245 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


is insoluble, and, I say it reverently, the moral 
character of the Supreme Being is a riddle to 
our conscience, unless we can discover a per- 
sonal, saving, redeeming revelation of the divine 
Love in the same world into which the Om- 
nipotent has permitted sin to enter. 

“ Till God in human flesh I see 
My thoughts no comfort find ; 

The holy , just and sacred Three 
Are terrors to my mind.” 

Now the trouble with men who have made 
systems of doctrine about God, even when they 
have believed sincerely in this revelation of God 
in Christ, is that they have made it supple- 
mental, instead of fundamental, to their 
thought. They have told us first what God 
must be, reasoning from their own dim con- 
ception of omnipotence and omnipresence and 
omniscience. They have given their definitions 
of divine justice and mercy, and laid down the 
conditions under which they are exercised. 
They have planned out the scope of foreknowl- 
edge, and traced the course of predestination. 
They have explained the mystery of sacraments, 
and made an orderly arrangement of the means 
of grace. And then, in this vast and complex 
system, they have found a place for Christ, and 
246 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 

they have unconsciously fitted Christ to that 
place. 

But the true way is just the reverse. It is 
first to accept Christ, and then to fit our 
theology to the truth as it is in him. He is the 
foundation already laid, and to him the outline 
and structure of the building must be con- 
formed. The mercy and justice of Christ are 
the mercy and justice of God. There is no pre- 
destination outside of Christ. All the divine 
foreknowledge is summed up and expressed in 
him, for he is the Wisdom and the Word of 
God. The sacraments are but signs and seals 
of him; and he is the means of grace whereby 
we are made partakers of the divine nature. 

And what follows from building the edifice 
of the faith in this way, on Christ as the foun- 
dation? Three things: First, it becomes sure 
and steadfast. Christ does not offer us a knowl- 
edge of God half so large, half so complete in 
logic and arrangement, as that which is offered 
by many human teachers. He leaves many 
secrets untold, many mysteries unsolved. But 
there is this difference. Their complete theodi- 
cies are insecure and perishable. The failure 
of one link in the chain of logic lets the whole 
bridge which is suspended by it fall into the 
roaring tide of doubt. But Christ’s revelation 
247 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


of God, confessedly limited and adapted to our 
finite minds, is a revelation of fact, of life, of 
reality, of true communion with the Father 
through the Son, and therefore it is firm and 
imperishable. It is not suspended over life. 
It rests upon life. 

Second : the Christian faith built upon Christ 
has a self-rectifying and purifying power. It 
has power to discover and reject the false ele- 
ments which are continually thrusting them- 
selves into Christianity from heathendom : super- 
stitions and perversions and assumptions; cruel 
and unworthy conceptions of God; elements 
borrowed in fact from the pagan religions and 
false philosophies. These things, I say, are 
detected and exposed by the effort to thor- 
oughly Christianize theology. Every great 
purification and revival in theology has come 
through men like Paul, like Chrysostom, like 
Francis of Assisi, like Martin Luther, like John 
Wesley, whose whole intellectual being was 
built upon personal contact with God in Jesus 
Christ. 

Third: the faith built upon Christ has over- 
come the protest which human nature has al- 
ways raised against false views of God, even 
when they have been proclaimed by ecclesias- 
tical authority. “The God whom we know 
248 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 

through Jesus Christ commends himself to 
bad men as well as to good men.” We may 
not be able now to persuade all men to believe 
in God, to love him, to serve him, any more 
than the apostles were able to do so; but at 
least, if we can present to the world the view 
of God which is in Christ Jesus, we shall hear 
from all men the confession that this is a God 
worthy to be worshipped and adored and 
served. 

II. From this point it is but a short and 
easy step to the next proposition. Jesus Christ 
is the foundation of a truly preachable and 
powerful gospel. It was of this chiefly that 
St. Paul was thinking when he wrote this text. 
Other preachers had come into his beloved 
church at Corinth, working not only with new 
methods, but as he feared on a new basis. 
They had attempted to introduce personal con- 
siderations of loyalty to certain parties in the 
church as the basis of the Christian fellowship; 
they had taught in such a way that adherence 
to human theories, and minor points of doc- 
trine, and personal leaders, seemed to be the 
principal thing, and fidelity to Jesus Christ a 
subordinate thing. The emphasis was wrong. 
The foundation was displaced. The whole 
building was in danger. 

249 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


Paul cried in the fervour of his conviction, 
“ Other foundation can no man lay than that 
is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Not that Paul 
himself never preached on other subjects than 
the person of Christ. His range of teaching 
was rich and generous, vastly beyond that of 
other preachers. There was no subject of 
thought, from the mysteries of divine preexist- 
ence to the ultimate relation of the irrational 
creatures to the manifestation of the sons of 
God, which was beyond the interest of his faith. 
There was no sphere of human duty, from that 
of the ruler on his throne to that of the slave 
in his master’s house, of which he did not dare 
to speak, with fearless, loving, inspiring, and 
commanding voice. But back of all that he 
said — nay, supporting and upholding all that 
he said on every subject — was the consciousness 
that God was in Christ reconciling the world 
to himself. That was the deep foundation of 
every argument and every exhortation; and 
that is the secret of preaching the gospel. 

Nothing is foreign to the gospel. It may 
enter, it must enter, into every region of human 
thought and conduct. But it must always be 
true to itself. It may not come as a philosophy, 
a morality, a criticism, but always as glad tid- 
ings. Many men preach as if Christ had never 
250 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 

really lived. Whatever subject the preacher 
touches, he must see it and treat it in the light 
that comes from the manger-cradle, the up- 
lifted cross, and the empty sepulchre. The 
former things are passed away, all things are 
become new; reason itself is transformed and 
recreated, and conscience is reilluminated, by 
the fact that God so loved the world that he 
gave his only begotten Son that whosoever be- 
lieveth in him should not perish but have ever- 
lasting life. No man in the world to-day has 
such power as he who can make his fellowmen 
feel that Christ is a reality. 

It is said of David Hume, the great skeptic, 
that he once went to listen to the preaching of 
John Brown of Haddington. “That is the man 
for me,” said Hume; “he means what he says; 
he speaks as if Jesus Christ were at his elbow.” 
The man of the world was right. No preaching 
can convince every man. But the only preach- 
ing that can convince or help any man is that 
in which every argument and every appeal 
rests at last upon Jesus Christ, the divine and 
immutable foundation of the gospel. 

III. From this it follows, in the third place, 
that Jesus Christ is the true and sure founda- 
tion of the moral life. For as the end of the 
gospel is to make men good, and as the essence 
251 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


of the gospel is the setting forth of Jesus Christ, 
it must follow that the best means of making 
men good is to bind their hearts in living faith 
to Jesus. 

But is this a fact, or is it only a dream of 
the ardent and enthusiastic Christian? Can 
we indeed find Christ at the foundation of what 
is best in humanity? I think we can. As a 
matter of history I think we can see that all 
the finest and noblest things in the world to- 
day, — the hospital, the asylum, the sanctities 
of home, the responsibilities of government, 
the liberties of mankind, are founded upon 
Christ. Without Christ they would never have 
been possible. Without Christ the very begin- 
nings and foreshadowings of them which were 
scattered through the world, would still have 
been frustrated and crushed. 

Look at every forward step which the world 
for eighteen hundred years has taken out of 
the darkness into the broader light of a new 
day, and at the head of the marching host you 
will see the banner of Christ Jesus, and behind 
the movement you will feel the mighty impulse 
of Christian faith. Look at the splendid up- 
risings of humanity against tyranny, and in- 
justice, and corruption, and wickedness in high 
places; and whether the revolution was accom- 
252 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 

plished in the awful arbitrament of battle or 
by the peaceful power of the ballot, you will see 
that the force which won the victory was the 
awakened and enkindled sentiment of those 
who acknowledge the law of Jesus Christ as 
supreme and call him their Master and Lord. 

Take the Christian sentiment clean out of 
the people of any land and see how many ref- 
ormations you can accomplish. Nay, let your 
accomplished reformation once shift its founda- 
tion from the law of justice and righteousness 
and brotherhood in Jesus Christ, let the agency 
to which you have committed the power wrested 
from unworthy hands forget the power which 
created it, and become a mere party among the 
parties, and see how soon it will decay and 
crumble, and need to be swept away. 

Mark you, we do not say that there are no 
good workers in good cause except those who 
are professedly Christians. That would be con- 
trary to Christ’s own teaching. He taught his 
disciples to welcome all who would labour with 
them in the casting out of devils, and said, “He 
that is not against us is for us.” Nor do we 
say that there is no virtue in humanity save 
that which feels and confesses its personal de- 
pendence upon Christ. For there are many 
noble principles and beautiful characters un- 
253 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 

consciously built upon a Christian foundation, 
laid by a mother’s prayers, a father’s example, 
though the builder may not know or acknowl- 
edge it. Yes, there are even larger edifices, so- 
cieties, nations, it may be, which are uncon- 
sciously based upon the moral ideal which is 
in Christ, and which silently acknowledge 
Christianity as the law of laws, even though 
God be not named in their constitution. They 
are like the villages in Egypt which were un- 
wittingly erected upon the massive foundations 
of some ancient temple. 

But what we say now is, that the only security 
for the conscious and deliberate building of the 
moral life, whether of communities or individ- 
uals, lies in making Jesus Christ the founda- 
tion. And why? Because there is no perma- 
nence of character, there is no consistency of 
action, without a clear and perfect and immu- 
table ideal. And there is no such ideal except 
Christ. 

Men have tried to create ideals for them- 
selves, and for a time they have seemed beau- 
tiful, but they have always failed and fallen. 
Each of these ideals has had its own virtues; 
but the “ defects of its virtues” have ultimately 
destroyed it. There was a philosophic ideal 
in the days of the Stoics and Epicureans. But 
254 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 

it was perverted and corrupted into the un- 
speakable frivolity and triviality of the later 
Alexandrian schools. There was a military 
ideal in the Middle Ages; but it hardened into 
intolerable cruelty and tyranny. There was an 
artistic ideal in the Renaissance; but it decayed 
in luxury and self-indulgence. There was a 
social ideal in the French Revolution, and it 
produced some noble and self-sacrificing men, 
some earnest and fervent efforts for the welfare 
of the world. That social ideal still survives, 
and there are some who think that it is the hope 
of the future. Its programme is to change the 
structure of society first, and consider the truth 
of Christianity afterwards. But even in a hun- 
dred years how has that ideal been warped and 
distorted into the ugly shapes of Anarchism 
and Nihilism ! And if it should carry out its 
programme of material equality for every man, 
what security would that give for moral eleva- 
tion and purity? What warrant have we for 
thinking that “the new society” would not be 
a dead level of equally uncomfortable, equally 
sensual, equally faithless, and equally hopeless 
men and women, with not a thought beyond 
this world, and not a care except to see that 
no one got a larger share of the loaves and fishes 
than they secured for themselves? 

255 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


No, the one ideal that is pure and permanent 
and satisfying, the one ideal that actually has 
had power to keep itself alive and prove itself 
victorious over the disintegrating forces of sin 
and death, is the ideal in Jesus Christ. The 
men and women who have built upon that foun- 
dation have been the best men and women, 
and have left behind them the most enduring 
and glorious work, even in the very domain 
where the human ideals have been erected as 
supreme. 

What contributions to human intelligence 
have been made to compare with those of Chris- 
tian philosophers like Augustine and Thomas 
Aquinas and Bacon and Leibnitz and Locke 
and Kant and Newton? What soldiers under 
the Roman eagles fought like the Christian 
legion, and what knight left such a record of 
chivalry as Bayard, sans peur et sans reproche? 
What poets sang like Dante and Milton ? 
What artists painted like Michael Angelo and 
Raphael? What apostles of humanity have 
made such real and lasting contributions to 
the happiness of mankind as William Wilber- 
force and Robert Raikes and John Howard 
and Florence Nightingale? Yes, what have 
all the social theorists and dreamers outside 
the circle of Christian charity done that will 
256 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 


compare for a moment with the silent, ceaseless 
ministry of service to the sick and wounded in 
great hospitals and crowded cities, of protec- 
tion to the helpless and comfort to the friend- 
less, of instruction to the ignorant and care to 
the forsaken, which thousands of men and 
women have been quietly giving, through the 
centuries, for Christ’s sake? 

If you want to be good and to do good, come 
to Christ and let him teach you. Form your 
character on his model, and let the ideal of a 
life in Christ, for Christ, like Christ, be the 
foundation on which you build for time and 
eternity. 

IV. Jesus Christ is the only foundation of 
the Christian Church. The church visible is 
not confined to any one nation or denomina- 
tion. It is composed of all who acknowledge 
Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. But the 
visible church is only the framework and scaf- 
folding of the invisible church, the Communion 
of Saints, the fullness of him that filleth all in 
all. How majestic, how full of flashing splen- 
dours, are the words in which the inspired apos- 
tles describe this glorious edifice, — “Built upon 
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being 
the chief corner stone”; “To whom coming 
as unto a living stone, ye also are built up a 
257 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up 
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus 
Christ” ! 

Taking this description of the invisible church 
into my hand as a torch to light my way, I go 
abroad through the Christian world and back 
through the ages, like one who walks through 
the long-drawn aisles, and mysterious crypts, 
and manifold chapels, of some magnificent Ca- 
thedral. I see and hear many things that aston- 
ish and perplex me. There are strange pictures 
on some of the walls, and strange incense rises 
from some of the altars. There are sacrifices 
offered which are carnal, and materials used 
which are not spiritual. But these human in- 
crustations which have gathered about Chris- 
tianity are disappearing and dropping away. 
Behind them rise the mighty, aerial walls. 
Through the passing words of error and folly 
framed by the lips of men, like the sound of 
the sea, like the voice of many waters, rises the 
Creed of Christendom. “I believe in God the 
Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ his only 
Son our Lord, begotten before all worlds, God 
of God, light of light, very God of very God, 
who for us men and our salvation came down 
from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy 
Ghost of the Virgin Mary.” 

258 


CHRIST THE FOUNDATION 


And then sweeter than angels’ songs breaks 
forth the solemn chant, “The Holy Church 
throughout all the world doth acknowledge 
Thee. The Father of an infinite majesty. Thine 
adorable true and only Son, also the Holy Ghost, 
the Comforter. Thou art the King of Glory, 
O Christ, Thou art the everlasting Son of the 
Father.” 


259 


XIY 


THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS 


He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord . — Romans 14 : 6. 


I 


CHRISTMAS GIVING 


HE custom of exchanging presents on a cer- 



*“■ tain day in the year is much older than 
Christmas, and means much less. It has ob- 
tained in almost all ages and among many dif- 
ferent nations. It is a fine thing or a foolish 
thing, as the case may be; an encouragement 
to friendliness, or a tribute to fashion; an ex- 
pression of good nature, or a bid for favour; 
an outgoing of generosity, or a disguise of greed; 
a cheerful old custom, or a futile old farce, ac- 
cording to the spirit which animates it and the 
form which it takes. 

But when this ancient tradition of a day of 
gifts was transferred to the Christmas season, 
it was brought into vital contact with an idea 
which must transform it, and with an example 
which must lift it up to a higher plane. The 


260 


THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS 


example is the life of Jesus. The idea is unsel- 
fish interest in the happiness of others. 

The great gift of Jesus to the world was him- 
self. He lived with and for men. He kept 
back nothing. In every particular and per- 
sonal gift that he made to certain people there 
was something of himself that made it precious. 

For example, at the wedding in Cana of Gali- 
lee, it was his thought for the feelings of the 
giver of the feast, and his wish that every guest 
should find due entertainment, that lent the 
flavour of a heavenly hospitality to the wine 
which he provided. 

When he gave bread and fish to the hungry 
multitude who had followed him out among 
the hills by the Lake of Gennesaret, the people 
were refreshed and strengthened by the sense 
of the personal care of Jesus for their welfare, 
as much as by the food which he bestowed upon 
them. It was another illustration of the sweet- 
ness of “a dinner of herbs, where love is.” 

The gifts of healing which he conferred upon 
many different kinds of sufferers were, in every 
case, evidences that Jesus was willing to give 
something of himself, his thought, his sym- 
pathy, his vital power, to the men and women 
among whom he lived. Once, when a paralytic 
was brought to Jesus on a bed, he surprised 
261 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


everybody, and offended some, by giving the 
poor wretch the pardon of his sins, before he 
gave new life to his body. That was just be- 
cause Jesus thought before he gave; because 
he desired to satisfy the deepest need; because 
in fact he gave something of himself in every 
gift. All true Christmas-giving ought to be 
after this pattern. 

Not that it must all be solemn and serious. 
For the most part it deals with little wants, 
little joys, little tokens of friendly feeling. But 
the feeling must be more than the token; else 
the gift does not really belong to Christmas. 

It takes time and effort and unselfish expen- 
diture of strength to make gifts in this way. 
But it is the only way that fits the season. 

The finest Christmas gift is not the one that 
costs the most money, but the one that carries 
the most love. 


II 

CHRISTMAS LIVING 

How seldom Christmas comes — only once a 
year; and how soon it is over — a night and a 
day! If that is the whole of it, it seems not 
much more durable than the little toys that 
one buys of a fakir on the street-corner. They 
262 


THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS 

run for an hour, and then the spring breaks, 
and the legs come off, and nothing remains but 
a contribution to the dust heap. 

But surely that need not and ought not to 
be the whole of Christmas — only a single day 
of generosity, ransomed from the dull servitude 
of a selfish year, — only a single night of merry- 
making, celebrated in the slave-quarters of a 
selfish race ! If every gift is the token of a per- 
sonal thought, a friendly feeling, an unselfish 
interest in the joy of others, then the thought, 
the feeling, the interest, may remain after the 
gift is made. 

The little present, or the rare and long- 
wished-for gift (it matters not whether the 
vessel be of gold, or silver, or iron, or wood, 
or clay, or just a small bit of birch bark folded 
into a cup), may carry a message something 
like this: 

“I am thinking of you to-day, because it is 
Christmas, and I wish you happiness. And 
to-morrow, because it will be the day after 
Christmas, I shall still wish you happiness; 
and so on, clear through the year. I may not 
be able to tell you about it every day, because 
I may be far away; or because both of us may 
be very busy; or perhaps because I cannot 
even afford to pay the postage on so many let- 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


ters, or find the time to write them. But that 
makes no difference. The thought and the 
wish will be here just the same. In my work 
and in the business of life, I mean to try not 
to be unfair to you or injure you in any way. 
In my pleasure, if we can be together, I would 
like to share the fun with you. Whatever joy 
or success comes to you will make me glad. 
Without pretense, and in plain words, good- 
will to you is what I mean, in the Spirit of 
Christmas.” 

It is not necessary to put a message like this 
into high-flown language, to swear absolute de- 
votion and deathless consecration. In love 
and friendship, small, steady payments on a 
cash basis are better than immense promissory 
notes. Nor, indeed, is it always necessary to 
put the message into words at all, nor even to 
convey it by a tangible token. To feel it and 
to act it out — that is the main thing. 

There are a great many people in the world 
whom we know more or less, but to whom for 
various reasons we cannot very well send a 
Christmas gift. But there is hardly one, in 
all the circles of our acquaintance, with whom 
we may not exchange the touch of Christmas 
life. 

In the outer circles, cheerful greetings, cour- 
264 


THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS 

tesy, consideration; in the inner circles, sym- 
pathetic interest, hearty congratulations, honest 
encouragement; in the inmost circle, comrade- 
ship, helpfulness, tenderness, — 

“ Beautif ul friendship tried by sun and wind 
Durable from the daily dust of life ” 

After all, Christmas-living is the best kind 
of Christmas-giving. 


Ill 

KEEPING CHRISTMAS 

It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. 
The mere marking of times and seasons, when 
men agree to stop work and make merry to- 
gether, is a wise and wholesome custom. It 
reminds a man to set his own little watch, now 
and then, by the great clock of humanity which 
runs on sun time. 

But there is a better thing than the obser- 
vance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping 
Christmas. 

Are you willing to forget what you have done 
for other people, and to remember what other 
people have done for you; to ignore what the 
world owes you, and to think what you owe 
the world; to put your rights in the background, 
265 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


and your duties in the middle distance, and 
your chances to do a little more than your duty 
in the foreground; to see that your fellow-men 
are just as real as you are, and try to look be- 
hind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; 
to own that probably the only good reason for 
your existence is not what you are going to get 
out of life, but what you are going to give to 
life; to close your book of complaints against 
the management of the universe, and look 
around you for a place where you can sow a 
few seeds of happiness — are you willing to do 
these things even for a day ? Then you can keep 
Christmas. 

Are you willing to stoop down and consider 
the needs and the desires of little children; to 
remember the weakness and loneliness of people 
who are growing old; to stop asking how much 
your friends love you, and ask yourself whether 
you love them enough; to bear in mind the 
things that other people have to bear on their 
hearts; to try to understand what those who 
live in the same house with you really want, 
without waiting for them to tell you; to trim 
your lamp so that it will give more light and 
less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your 
shadow will fall behind you; to make a grave 
for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your 
£66 


THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS 


good thoughts, with the gate open — are you 
willing to do these things even for a day? 
Then you can keep Christmas . 

Are you willing to believe that love is the 
strongest thing in the world — stronger than 
hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death — 
and that the life of Jesus which began in Beth- 
lehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image 
and brightness of the Eternal Love ? Then you 
can keep Christmas . 

And if you keep it for a day, why not always ? 

But you can never keep it alone. 


£67 


XV 

PEACE IN THE SOUL* 

Peace I leave with you : my peace 1 give unto you. — St. John 14 : 27. 


"DEACE is one of the great words of the Holy 
Scriptures. It is woven through the Old 
Testament and the New like a golden thread. 
It inheres and abides in the character of God, — 

“ The central peace subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation” 

It is the deepest and most universal desire 
of man, whose prayer in all ages has been, 
“Grant us Thy Peace, O Lord.” It is the re- 
ward of the righteous, the blessing of the good, 
the crown of life’s effort, and the glory of eter- 
nity. 

The prophets foretell the beauty of its com- 
ing and the psalmists sing of the joy which it 
brings. Jesus Christ is its Divine Messiah, its 
high priest and its holy prince. The evangelists 
and prophets proclaim and preach it. From 

* The two following sermons were preached at Eastertide, 1919, in 
the Park Avenue Church, New York, the pastor of which is my son 
and friend, Tertius van Dyke. 


268 


PEACE IN THE SOUL 

beginning to end the Bible is full of the praise 
of peace. 

Yet there never was a book more full of stories 
of trouble and strife, disaster and sorrow. God 
himself is revealed in it not as a calm, un- 
troubled, self-absorbed Deity, occupied in 
beatific contemplation of his own perfections. 
He is a God who works and labours, who wars 
against the evil, who fights for the good. The 
psalmist speaks of him as “The Lord of Hosts, 
strong and mighty in battle.” The Revelation 
of St. John tells us that “There was war in 
Heaven; Michael and his angels fought against 
the dragon.” Jesus Christ said: “I came not 
to send peace, but a sword.” 

It is evident, then, that this idea of “peace,” 
like all good and noble things, has its counter- 
feit, its false and subtle adversary, which steals 
its name and its garments to deceive and be- 
tray the hearts of men. We find this clearly 
taught in the Bible. Not more earnestly does 
it praise true peace than it denounces false 
peace. 

There is no 'peace, saith the Lord, unto the 
wicked (Isaiah 48 : 22). 

For they have healed the hurt of the daughter 
of my people slightly, saying , Peace, peace ; when 
there is no peace (Jer. 8 : 11). 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


If thou liadst known , even thou, at least in this 
thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! 
but now they are hid from thine eyes (St. Luke 
19 : 42 ). 

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be 
spiritually minded is life and peace (Romans 
8 : 6 ). 

There never was a time in human history 
when a right understanding of the nature of 
true peace, the path which leads to it, the laws 
which govern it, was more necessary or more 
important than it is to-day. 

The world has just passed through a ghastly 
experience of war at its worst. Never in his- 
tory has there been such slaughter, such agony, 
such waste, such desolation, in a brief space of 
time, as in the four terrible years of conflict 
which German militarism forced on the world 
in the twentieth century. Having been in the 
midst of it, I know what it means. 

Now we have “supped full with horrors.” 
We have had more than enough of that bloody 
banquet. The heart of humanity longs for 
peace, as it has always longed, but now with a 
new intensity, greater than ever before. Yet 
the second course of war continues. The dogs 
fight for the crumbs under the peace-table. 
Ignorant armies clash by night. Cities are 
270 


PEACE IN THE SOUL 


bombarded and sacked. The Bolsheviki raise 
the red flag of violence and threaten a war of 
classes throughout the world. 

You can never make a golden age out of 
leaden men, or a peaceful world out of lovers 
of strife. 

Where shall peace be found? How shall it 
be attained and safeguarded? Evidently the 
militarists have assaulted it with their doctrine 
that might makes right. Evidently the pacifists 
have betrayed it with their doctrine of passive 
acceptance of wrong. Somewhere between these 
two errors there must be a ground of truth on 
which Christians can stand to defend their faith 
and maintain their hope of a better future for 
the world. 

Let me begin by speaking of Peace in the 
Soul. That is where religion begins, in the 
heart of a person. Its flowers and fruits are 
social. They are for the blessing of the world. 
But its root is personal. You can never start 
with a class-conscious or a mass-conscious Chris- 
tianity. It must begin with just you and 
God. 

Marshal Joffre, that fine Christian soldier, 
said a memorable thing about the winning of 
the war: “Our victory will be the fruit of in- 
dividual sacrifice.” So of the coming of peace 
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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


on earth we may say the same: it will be the 
fruit of the entrance of peace into individual 
hearts and lives. 

A world at war is the necessary result of hu- 
man restlessness and enmities. “From whence 
come wars and fightings among you? Come 
they not hence, even of your lusts, that war in 
your members ?” Envy, malice, greed, hatred, 
deceit, — these are the begetters of strife on 
earth. 

A world at peace can come only from the 
co-operation of peaceful human spirits. There- 
fore we must commence to learn what peace is, 
by seeking it in our souls through faith; and 
we must find it, one at a time. 

Christ promised peace to his disciples at the 
Communion in that little upper room in Jeru- 
salem, nineteen hundred years ago. Evidently 
it was not an outward but an inward peace. 
He told them that they would have much 
trouble in the world. But he assured them 
that this could not overcome them if they be- 
lieved in him and in his Father God. He 
warned them of conflict, and assured them of 
inward peace. 

What are the elements of this wondrous gift 
which Christ gave to his disciples, and which 
he offers to us ? 


PEACE IN THE SOUL 


I. First, the peace of Christ is the peace of 
being divinely loved. 

Nothing rests and satisfies the heart like the 
sense of love. A little child, which has grown 
tired and fretful at its play, is frightened sud- 
denly by some childish terror. Weeping, it 
runs to its mother. She takes the child in her 
arms, folds it to her breast, bends over it, and 
soothes it with fond words which mean only 
this: “I love you.” Very soon the child sinks 
to rest, contented and happy, in the sense of 
being loved. “ Herein is love, not that we loved 
God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be 
the propitiation for our sins.” In Jesus Christ 
God is stretching out his arms to us, drawing 
us to him, enfolding us in the secret of peace. 
If we believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of 
God, he makes us sure of a Divine affec- 
tion, deep, infinite, inexhaustible, imperish- 
able. “For God so loved the world, that he 
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life.” God, who “spared not his 
dearly-beloved Son, but delivered him up for 
us all, how shall he not with him also freely 
give us all things?” “Nothing shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is 
in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

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COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


II. The Christian peace is the peace of be- 
ing divinely controlled. The man who accepts 
Jesus Christ truly, accepts him as Master and 
Lord. He believes that Christ has a purpose 
for him, which will surely be fulfilled; work 
for him, which will surely be blessed if he only 
tries to do it. Most of the discords of life come 
from a conflict of authorities, of plans, of pur- 
poses. Suppose that a building were going up, 
and the architect had one design for it, and the 
builder had another. What perplexity and con- 
fusion there would be! How ill things would 
fit ! What perpetual quarrels and blunders 
and disappointments ! But when the workman 
accepts the designer’s plan and simply does his 
best to carry that out, harmony, joyful labour, 
and triumph are the result. If we accept 
God’s plan for us, yield to him as the daily 
controller and director of our life, our work, 
however hard, becomes peaceful and secure. 
No perils can frighten, no interruptions can 
dishearten us. 

Not many years ago some workmen were 
digging a tunnel, when a sudden fall of earth 
blocked the mouth of the opening. Their com- 
panions on the outside found out what had 
happened, and started to dig through the mass 
of earth to the rescue. It was several hours 
274 


PEACE IN THE SOUL 


before they made their way through. When 
they went in they found the workmen going 
on with their labour on the tunnel. “We 
knew,” said one of them, “that you’d come to 
help us, and we thought the best way to make 
time pass quick was to keep on with the work.” 
That is what a Christian may say to Christ 
amid the dangers and disasters of life. We 
know that he will never forsake us, and the best 
way to be at peace is to be about his business. 
He says to us: “As the Father sent me, even 
so send I you.” 

III. The Christian peace is the peace of 
being divinely forgiven. 

“In every man,” said a philosopher, “there 
is something which, if we knew it, would make 
us despise him.” Let us turn the saying, and 
change it from a bitter cynicism into a whole- 
some truth. 

In every one of us there is something which, 
if we realize it, makes us condemn ourselves, 
and hunger and thirst after righteousness, and 
long for forgiveness. 

It is this consciousness of sin, of evil in our 
hearts and lives, that makes us restless and 
unhappy. The plasters and soothing lotions 
with which the easy-going philosophers of mod- 
ern times cover it up, do not heal it; they only 
27 5 


COUNSELS BY THE WAY 


hide it. There is no cure for it, there is no rest 
from it, except in the divine forgiveness. There 
is no sure pledge of this except in the holy sacri- 
fice and promise of Christ, “Son, daughter, thy 
sins are forgiven thee, go in peace.” 

Understand, I do not mean that what we 
need and want is to have our sins ignored and 
overlooked. On the contrary, that is just what 
would fail to bring us true rest. For if God 
took no account of sins, required no repentance 
and reparation, he would not be holy, just, and 
faithful, a God whom we can adore and love 
and trust. 

Nor do I mean that what we need is merely 
to have the punishment of sins remitted. That 
would not satisfy the heart. Is the child con- 
tented when the father says, “Well, I will not 
punish you. Go away”? No, what the child 
wants is to hear the father say, “I forgive you. 
Come to me.” It is to be welcomed back to 
the father’s home, to the father’s heart, that 
the child longs. 

Peace means not to have the offense ignored, 
but to have it pardoned: not to have the 
punishment omitted, but to have the separa- 
tion from God ended and done away with. 
That is the peace of being divinely forgiven, — 
a peace which recognizes sin, and triumphs over 
276 


PEACE IN THE SOUL 


it, — a peace which not merely saves us from 
death but welcomes us home to the divine love 
from which we have wandered. 

That is the peace which Christ offers to each 
one of us in his Gospel. We need it in this mod- 
ern world as much as men and women ever 
needed it in the old world. No New Era will 
ever change its meaning or do away with its 
necessity. Indeed, it seems to me that we need 
this old-fashioned religion to-day more than 
ever. 

We need it for our own comfort and strength. 
We need it to heal the spiritual wounds of war. 
We need it to deliver us from the vanity and 
hollowness, the fever and hysteria of the pres- 
ent age. We need it to make us better soldiers 
and workers for every good cause. Peace is 
coming to all the earth some day through Christ. 
And those who will do most to help him bring 
it are the men and women to whom he gives 
Peace in the Soul. 


277 


XVI 

PEACE AND IMMORTALITY 


THE SPIRIT OF EASTER 

Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, hut after the power 
of an endless life . — Hebrews 7 : 16. 

rpHE message and hope of immortality are 
nowhere more distinctly conveyed to our 
minds than in connection with that resurrec- 
tion morn when Jesus appeared to Mary Mag- 
dalene. The anniversary of that day will ever 
be the festival of the human soul. Even those 
who do not clearly understand or fully accept 
its meaning in history and religion, — even chil- 
dren and ignorant folk and doubters and unbe- 
lievers, — yes, even frivolous people and sullen 
people, feel that there is something in this fes- 
tival which meets the need and longing of their 
hearts. It is a day of joy and gladness, a day 
of liberation and promise, a day for flowers to 
bloom and birds to sing, a day of spiritual spring- 
tide and immortal hope. 

Mankind desires and needs such a day. We 
are overshadowed in all our affections and as- 
pirations, all our efforts and designs, by the 
278 


PEACE AND IMMORTALITY 


dark mystery of bodily death; the uncertainty 
and the brevity of earthly existence make us 
tremble and despair; the futility of our plans 
dismays us; the insecurity of our dearest trea- 
sure in lives linked to ours fills us with dismay. 

Is there no escape from Death, the tyrant, 
the autocrat, the destroyer, the last enemy? 
Why love, why look upward, why strive for 
better things if this imperator of failure, ulti- 
mate extinction, rules the universe? No hope 
beyond the grave means no peace this side of 
it. A life without hope is a life without God. 
If Death ends all, then there is no Father in 
Heaven in whom we can trust. Who shall de- 
liver us from the body of this Death? 

Now comes Easter with its immortal promise 
and assurance. Jesus of Nazareth, who died on 
Calvary, a martyr of humanity, a sacrifice of 
Divinity, is alive and appears to his humble 
followers. The manner of his appearance, to 
Mary Magdalene, to his disciples, is not the 
most important thing. The fact is that he did 
appear. He who was crucified in the cause of 
righteousness and mercy, lives on and for ever. 
The message of his resurrection is “the power 
of an endless life.” 

The proof of this message is in the effect that 
it produced. It transformed the handful of 
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Jesus’ followers from despair to confidence. It 
gave Christianity its growing influence over 
the heart of humanity. It is this message of 
immortality that makes religion vital to the 
human world to-day, and essential to the foun- 
dation of peace on earth. 

We must not forget in our personal griefs 
and longings, in our sorrows for those whom 
we have lost and our desire to find them again, 
in our sense of our own mortal frailty and the 
brief duration of earthly life, the celestial im- 
pulse which demands a life triumphant over 
death. 

The strongest of all supports for peace on 
earth is the faith in immortality. There is 
nothing good or great that we think or feel or 
endeavour, that is not a reaching out to some- 
thing better. Our finest knowledge is but the 
consciousness of limitation and the longing 
that it may be removed. Our best moral effort 
is but a slow advance towards something better. 
Our sense of the difference between good and 
evil, our penitence, our aspiration, all this moral 
freight with which our souls are laden, is a cargo 
consigned to an unseen country. Our bill of 
lading reads, “To the immortal life.” If we 
must sink in mid-ocean, then all is lost, and 
the voyage of life is a predestined wreck. 

280 


PEACE AND IMMORTALITY 

The wisest, the strongest, the best of man- 
kind, have felt this most deeply. The faith in 
immortality belongs to the childhood of the 
race, and the greatest of the sages have always 
returned to it and taken refuge in it. Socrates 
and Plato, Cicero and Plutarch, Montesquieu 
and Franklin, Kant and Emerson, Tennyson 
and Browning, — all bear witness to the incom- 
pleteness of life and reach out to a completion 
beyond the grave. 

“No great Thinker ever lived and taught you 
All the wonder that his soul received; 

No great Painter ever set on canvas 
All the glorious vision he conceived . 

“No Musician ever held your spirit 
Charmed and hound in his melodious chains; 

But, be sure, he heard, and strove to render. 

Feeble echoes of celestial strains. 

“No real Poet ever wove in numbers 
All his dream, but the diviner part. 

Hidden from all the world, spake to him only 
In the voiceless silence of his heart. 

“So with Love: for Love and Art united 
Are twin mysteries: different yet the same; 

Poor indeed would be the love of any 
Who could find its full and perfect name. 

“Love may strive; but vain is its endeavour 
All its boundless riches to unfold; 

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Still its tenderest , truest secret lingers 
Ever in its deepest depths untold. 

“ Things of Time have voices : speak and perish. 
Art and Love speak ; hut their words? must he 
Like sighings of illimitable forests 
And waves of an unfathomable sea." 


Can it be that death shall put the final seal 
of irretrievable ruin on all this uncompleted 
effort? Can it be that the grave shall whelm 
all this unuttered love in endless silence ? What 
a wild waste of treasure, what a mad destruc- 
tion of fair designs, what a failure, life would 
be if death must end all ! 

The very reasonableness of our nature, our 
sense of order, declare the impotence of Death 
to create such a wreck. And most of all our 
deep affections cry out against the conclusion 
of despair. They will not hear of dissolution. 
They reach out their hands into the darkness. 
They demand and they promise an unending 
fellowship, a deepening communion, a more 
perfect satisfaction. Do you remember what 
Thackeray wrote? “If love lives through all 
life, and survives through all sorrow; and re- 
mains steadfast with us through all changes; 
and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; 
and if we die, deplores us for ever, and still loves 
282 


PEACE AND IMMORTALITY 

us equally; and exists with the very last gasp 
and throb of the faithful bosom, whence it 
passes with the pure soul beyond death, surely 
it shall be immortal. Though we who remain 
are separated from it, is it not ours in heaven ? 
If we love still those whom we lose, can we alto- 
gether lose those whom we love?” 

To deny this instinct is to deny that which 
lies at the very root of our life. If love perishes 
with death, then our affections are our curses, 
the world is a torture-house, and “all things 
work together for evil to those who love.” Do 
you believe it ? Is it possible ? All that is best 
and noblest and purest within us rejects such a 
faith in Absolute Evil as the power that has 
created and rules the world. In the presence 
of love we feel that we behold that which must 
belong to a good God and therefore cannot die. 
Destruction cannot touch it. The grave can- 
not hold it. Loving and being loved, we dare 
to stand in the very doorway of the tomb, and 
assert the power of an endless life. 

It seems to me that this courage never comes 
to us so fully as when we are brought in closest 
contact with death, when we are brought face 
to face with that dread shadow and forced either 
to deny its power, once and for ever, or to give 
up everything and die with our hopes. I wish 
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that I could make this clear to you as it lies 
in my own experience. Perhaps in trying to 
do it I should speak closer to your own heart 
than in any other way. 

A flower grew in your garden. You delighted 
in its beauty and fragrance. It gave you all 
it had to give, but it did not love you. It could 
not. When the time came for it to die, you 
were sorry. But it did not seem to you strange 
or unnatural. There was no waste. Its mis- 
sion was fulfilled. You understood why its 
petals should fall, its leaf wither, its root and 
branch decay. And even if a storm came and 
snapped it, still there was nothing lost that 
was indispensable, nothing that could not be 
restored. 

A child grew in your household, dearly loved 
and answering your love. You saw that soul 
unfold, learning to know the evil from the good, 
learning to accept duty and to resist selfishness, 
learning to be brave and true and kind, learn- 
ing to give you day by day a deeper and a richer 
sympathy, learning to love God and to pray 
and to be good. And then perhaps you saw 
that young heart being perfected under the 
higher and holier discipline of suffering, bearing 
pain patiently, facing trouble and danger like 
a hero, not shrinking even from the presence 
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of death, but trusting all to your love and God’s, 
and taking just what came from day to day, 
from hour to hour. And then suddenly the 
light went out in the shining eyes. The brave 
heart stopped. The soul was gone. Lost, 
perished, blotted out for ever in the darkness 
of death ? Ah, no ; you know better than that. 
That clear, dawning intelligence, that deepening 
love, that childlike faith in God, that pure in- 
nocence of soul, did not come from the dust. 
How could they return thither? The music 
ceases because the instrument is broken. But 
the player is not dead. He is learning a better 
music. He is finding a more perfect instrument. 
It is impossible that he should be holden of 
death. God wastes nothing so precious. 

This is what Emerson wrote after the death 
of his little son: 

“What is excellent 
As God lives is 'permanent. 

Hearts are dust ; hearts' loves remain. 

Heart's love will meet thee again." 

But I think we must go further than this in 
order to understand the full strength and com- 
fort of the text. The assertion of the impotence 
of death to end all is based upon something 
deeper than the prophecy of immortality in the 
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human heart. It has a stronger foundation 
than the outreachings of human knowledge and 
moral effort towards a higher state in which 
completion may be attained. It has a more 
secure ground to rest upon than the deathless 
affection with which our love clings to its ob- 
ject. The impotence of death is revealed to us 
in the spiritual perfection of Christ. 

Here then, in the "power of an endless life,” 
I find the corner-stone of peace on earth among 
men of good-will. Take this mortal life as a 
thing of seventy years, more or less, to which 
death puts a final period, and you have nothing 
but confusion, chance and futility, — nothing 
safe, nothing realized, nothing completed. Evil 
often triumphs. Virtue often is defeated. 

“ The good die young , 

And we whose hearts are dry as summer dust 
Burn to the socket ” 

But take death, as Christ teaches us, not as 
a full stop, but as only a comma in the story 
of an endless life, and then the whole aspect 
of our existence is changed. That which is 
material, base, evil, drops down. That which 
is spiritual, noble, good, rises to lead us on. 

The conviction of immortality, the forward- 
looking faith in a life beyond the grave, the 
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spirit of Easter, is essential to peace on earth 
for three reasons. 

I. It is the only faith that lifts man’s soul, 
which is immortal, above his body, which is 
perishable. It raises him out of the tyranny 
of the flesh to the service of his ideals. It makes 
him sure that there are things worth fighting 
and dying for. The fighting and the dying, for 
the cause of justice and liberty, are sacrifices 
on the Divine altar which will never be for- 
gotten. 

II. The faith in immortality carries with it 
the assurance of a Divine reassessment of earth’s 
inequalities. Those who have suffered unjustly 
here will be recompensed in the future. Those 
who have acted wickedly and unjustly here 
will be punished. Whether that punishment 
will be final or remedial we do not know. Per- 
haps it may lead to the extinction of the soul 
of evil, perhaps to its purifying and deliverance. 
On these questions I fall back on the word of 
God: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift 
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

III. The faith in immortality brings with it 
the sense of order, tranquillity, steadiness and 
courage in the present life. It sets us free from 
mean and cowardly temptations, makes it easier 
to resist the wild animal passions of lust and 

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greed and cruelty, brings us into eternal rela- 
tions and fellowships, makes us partners with 
the wise and good of all the ages, ennobles our 
earthly patriotism by giving us a heavenly 
citizenship. Yea, it knits us in bonds of love 
with the coming generation. It is better than 
the fountain of youth. We shall know and see 
them as they go on their way, long after we 
have left the path. The faith in immortality 
sets a touch of the imperishable on every gen- 
erous impulse and unselfish deed. It inspires 
to sublime and heroic virtues, — spiritual splen- 
dours, — deeds of sacrifice and suffering for which 
earth has no adequate recompense, but whose 
reward is great in heaven. Here is the patience 
of the saints, the glorious courage of patriots, 
martyrs, and confessors, something more bright 
and shining than secular morality can bring 
forth, — a flashing of the inward light which 
fails not, but grows clearer as death draws near. 
What noble evidences of this came to us out 
of the great w T ar ! 

“Are you in great distress?” asked a nurse 
of an American soldier whose legs had been 
shot away on the battle-field. “I am in as great 
peace,” said he, “through Jesus my Lord, as 
a man can possibly be, out of Paradise.” 

A secretary of the Y. M. C. A., the night 
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before he was killed, wrote to his father: “I 
have not been sent here to die: I am to fight: 
I offer my life for future generations; I shall 
not die, I shall merely change my direction. 
He who walks before us is so great that we can- 
not lose him from sight.” 

A simple French boy, grievously wounded, 
is dying in the ambulance. He is a Protestant. 
The nurse who bends over him is a Catholic 
sister. She writes down his words as they fall 
slowly from his lips: “O my God, let Thy will 
be done and not mine. O my God, Thou know- 
est that I never wished war, but that I have 
fought because it was Thy will; I offered my 
life so that peace might prevail. O my God, 
I pray for all my dear ones, . . . father, mother, 
brothers, sisters. Give a hundredfold to these 
nurses for all they have done for me. I pray 
for them one and all.” 

Here, in the midst of carnage and confusion, 
horror and death, was perfect peace, the tri- 
umph of immortality. 

What then shall we say of the new teachers 
and masters who tell us that they are going to 
banish this outworn superstition and all others 
like it from the mind of man ? They are going 
to make a new world in which men shall walk 
by sight, and not by faith; a world in which 
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there shall be neither nation, God, nor Church, 
nor anywhere a thought of any life but this 
which ends in the grave. It is a mad dream of 
wild and reckless men. But it threatens sorrow 
to all the world. And if these new tyrants of 
ignorance and unbelief have their way, the 
darkness will spread until the black cloud 
charged with death covers the face of the earth 
for a season with shame and anguish and de- 
struction. A sane world, an orderly world, a 
peaceful world, can never be founded on ma- 
terialism. That foundation is a quicksand in 
which all that is dearest to man goes down to 
death. 

Religion is essential to true peace in the soul 
and to peace on earth through righteousness. 
Immortality is essential to true religion. 
Thanks be to God who hath given us Jesus 
Christ, who was dead and is alive again and 
liveth for evermore, to touch and ennoble, to 
inspire and console, to pacify and uplift our 
earthly existence with the power of an endless 
life. 


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